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WASHINGTON, D.C. 
A
Literary
“Washington'ianum” 
(A
“Washington City” Imprint). Dinmore, Richard.
Select and fugitive poetry. A compilation. With notes biographical and historical.
Washington City: Pr. at the Franklin Press [by James Lyon & Richard Dinmore],
1802. 12mo (16.3 cm, 6.4"). 288 pp. 
Click any image where the hand appears on • Wegelin 932; Shaw & Shoemaker 2148. Period-style quarter tan cloth over light blue paper–covered sides, spine with printed paper label. Title-page torn, with outer corner chipped, resulting in loss of four letters from end of title; now mounted. One contents leaf with edge tear extending into text; last leaf with short edge tears. Some light to moderate foxing, with pages age-toned; final page with shadow of pencilled “Finis” and p. 80 with pencilled comment as above.
Power Corruption & Intrigue
— Washington in the Late 19th Century Adams, Henry. Democracy, an American novel. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1880. 12mo. [1] f., 374 pp.
Click the images for enlargements. A novel about political power, corruption, and intrigue in Washington with a cast that includes legislators, socialites, widows, and diplomats.
Issued in the Leisure-hour series as number 112.
• Wright, III, 17; BAL 11F. Publisher's mustard brown cloth with the spider-web design in black, spine cloth with a lightened patch and chipped at head; some soiling and spots. Ex–social club library: Paper shelf label to spine, same call number on front fly-leaf, rubber-stamp on title-page, no other markings. Volume a little skewed. A good+ copy. (29986)
A National Trust Publication
(Decatur House).
Beale, Marie. Decatur House and its inhabitants.
[Washington, D.C.: National Trust for Historic Preservation,] 1954. Small 4to.
[4] ff., 156 pp., illus.
• Publisher's cloth.
Wonderful to Leaf Through Gill, Brendan. John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. New York: Harry N. Abrams, ©1981. 4to. 160 pp., illus.
• Publisher's cloth and original dust jacket.
More than One Lifetime's Worth of Adventure & Interesting Ideas Harriott, John. Struggles through life, exemplified in the various travels and adventures in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, of John Harriott, Esq. London: Pr. for the author, 1815. 12mo (18 cm, 7.1"). 3 vols. I: Frontis., xvxv, [1], 443, [1] pp. II: xii, 428, [2] pp. III: vii, [1], 479, [1] pp. (lacking pp. 69–72); 1 fold. plt., 1 plt.
Click the images for enlargements. 
one
of the founders of the Thames police, a clever and independent
mariner who went adventuring around the world before settling down to become
an Essex justice of the peace and eventually Resident Magistrate of the Thames
River Police (a.k.a. the Marine Police Force, sometimes called England's
first official police force). Here he looks back on his remarkably varied youthful
escapades, including travelling in the merchant-service, visiting “the
Savages in North America,” meeting the King of Denmark, serving in the
East India Company's military service, and narrowly escaping such dangers as
tigers, poisonous snakes, floods, fires, and scamming fathers-in-law. If the
narrator is to be believed, the two issues that caused him the chiefest distress
in life were pecuniary difficulties and other people's unchivalrous treatment
of women. He also has much to say about law and business in the New World and
the Old, slavery in America, forcible incarceration in private madhouses (with
excerpts from a first-person account of such), and the nature of farming in
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, as well as the state of affairs in
Washington, DC, and,
of course, the history of the creation of the Thames police.
Vol. I opens with a steel-engraved portrait of the author, done by Henry
Cook after Hervé; vol. III is illustrated with an 
oversized,
folding plate of a water-engine intended for millwork, devised
by the author, and a plate of another of his inventions: the automated “chamber
fire escape”, which enables anyone to lower him- or herself from a high
window. This is the third edition, following the first of 1807.
• NSTC H625; Sabin 30461. Contemporary speckled sheep,
spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels; vol. I with joints and extremities
refurbished, vols. II and III with spines and edges rubbed, old strips of
library tape reinforcing spine heads. Ex–social club library: 19th-century
bookplates, call number on endpapers, pressure-stamp on title-pages, vols.
II and III with paper shelving labels at top of spines (vol. I showing signs
of now-absent label). Vol. I title-page with offsetting from frontispiece;
vol. III with pp. 69–72 excised (two leaves of a rather long religious-themed
letter from Harriott to his son) and with upper portion of one leaf crumpled,
reinforced some time ago. Some light age-toning, intermittent small spots
of foxing and ink-staining, pages generally clean. 
Utterly
absorbing. (30651)
A Prominent Lawyer, Skillful Orator, & Charming Family Man Kennedy, John Pendleton. Memoirs of the life of William Wirt, attorney general of the United States. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1849. 8vo (23.7 cm, 9.3"). 2 vols. I: Frontis., 417, [1], 4, [48 (adv.)] pp. II: 450, [2] pp.; 1 facs.
Click the images for enlargements. Vol. I opens with a rather nice mezzotint portrait of Wirt, engraved by A.B. Walter after Charles B. King; vol. II with an oversized, folding facsimile of a letter from John Adams.
• BAL 11056; Cohen 2161; Howes K87; Sabin 37415. Publisher's brown cloth, covers framed in blind-stamped strapwork, spines with gilt-stamped title and blind-stamped decorations; cloth lightly dust-soiled, chipped at corners and spine extremities. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplates, call number on endpapers, rubber-stamp on title-pages. Vol. II: one leaf of contents with two short tears. Pages clean. (29413)
Maggs AMERICANA!
(Library of Congress).
Maggs Bros., London. An illustrated catalogue raisonné
of one hundred and six original manuscripts, autographs, maps, and printed books
illustrating the discovery & history of America from 1492 to 1814. Loaned
by Maggs Bros., of London. 
Exhibited at the Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C., Spring, 1929. Folio. 233 pp., [1] p.; illus.
The Trent Affair
Rush, Benjamin. Letter on the rebellion, to a citizen of Washington from a citizen of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: John Campbell, 1862. 8vo. 23, [1 (blank)] pp.
• Sewn as issued. Once folded in six parts. Long 2 1/2 inch tears extending from fore-edges, to first three leaves. Two dog-eared corners, a few short tears to final leaf, two small holes with loss of a few words of text. (557)
“A
Haven of Peace in a Distracted
World”
Spaulding, Thomas M. The Literary Society in peace
and war. Washington; Menasha, WI: Privately printed by George Banta Publishing Co., 1947.
8vo. 37, [1 (blank)] pp.
150 copies; our caption quotation
appears on p. 1. With a list of members on pp. 23–37.
• Publisher's cloth, lettered in gilt on the front. Near fine. (26702)
“The
Details of the Late War”
Subaltern
(Georg Robert Gleig, attrib.).
A subaltern in America; comprising his narrative of the campaigns of the British
army, at Baltimore, 
Washington,
&c. &c. during the late war. Philadelphia: E.L. Carey & A. Hart;
Boston: Allen & Ticknor, 1833. 12mo (18.3 cm, 7.25"). 266 pp.
Click the images for enlargements. 
A pencilled annotation in one margin of this copy reads “The author is not aware that the people in the Southern States are not called Yankees”; one particularly anti-American remark later in the volume has been lined through in pencil.
• Sabin 27570; Howes S1115. Publisher's speckled sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label; covers sunned unevenly, edge/extremities rubbed, head of spine showing traces of now-absent label. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplate on front pastedown, front free endpaper lacking, pressure-stamp on title-page. Title-page with supposed author's name inked in upper margin. Waterstaining to lower outer corners of first few leaves; scattered spots of foxing and staining; one signature much browned, showing the different effects of time and “life” on different papers. (26376)
A
Capital
Crimes Mystery Novel
Truman, Margaret. Murder at the National Cathedral. New York: Random House, 1990. 8vo.
• Publisher's cloth. Very good condition, in a very good dust jacket.
Convention
Constitution
Membership
United States Railway Mail Service Mutual Benefit Association. Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Convention of the United States Railway Mail Service Mutual Benefit Association, held at Washington, D. C., September 4th and 5th, 1878, with the constitution and by-laws as amended thereat, and list of members of the association. Washington: Pr. by J. F. Sheiry, 1878. 16mo. 175 pp.
• Original printed wrappers, chipped at spine and edges and corners without loss of printing; darkened. A shallow chip or two to title and following page, shallow dog-earing and faint waterstaining to initial leaves including title-page; otherwise, clean and free of chips or tears. (21257)
See also, perhaps, GENERAL READING — where there are a good many
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