WOMEN

“There is One Above, WhoLoves Thee with Unchangeable Love”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Uncommon chapbook, illustrated with a title-page vignette and seven full-page wood engravings. This is printed in a rather unusual yet effective format.  A verse of Mary Ann Brown's poem “Who Loves Me Best?” (anonymous here, but printed under Brown's name in numerous contemporary compilations) appears at the top of each recto page, while under a rule beneath it runs the prose short story “The Canary Bird,” in reinforcement of the general moral. (Each verso offers a picture, save the last which offers the poem, “The Resting Place.”)

This was first printed in 1839, again in 1843, and then only this last edition. We find but two U.S. institutional holdings.

•  Lacking wrappers. Lightly foxed; corners bumped; last leaf a bit creased.  (27855)

For RELIGION,  click here.

A Scandalous Life — An Elegant Book

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition of this biography constructed by Charles Langdale (1787–1868) from letters written by and concerning Maria Anne Fitzherbert, née Smythe (1756–1837), the morganatic wife of future King George IV, which Langdale received by confidential post after the death of his brother, one of her correspondents, Lord Stourton. Catholic, twice widowed, and a commoner to boot, Mrs. Fitzherbert was an easy target for scandalmongers; here, a contemporary endeavors to redeem her from the “reproach of a dishonest connection [with George IV] and abandoned principle” (p. 11), brought on by Lord Holland in his “Memoirs of the Whig Party” published the year prior in the Dublin Review.

The elegant frontispiece is a portrait of Mrs. Fitzherbert by J. Broum after Richard Cosway, R.A. (1742–1821), the famous miniaturist who painted her on numerous occasions and whose portraits of her were so admired by her husband the King, that he took one to his grave.

Binding:  Full later brick red calf by Root & Son, double-ruled in gilt with leafy flowers in the board corners and in four of six spine compartments; gilt title, etc., on black morocco lettering pieces in the remaining spine compartments. Gilt-rolled board edges and turn-ins; mottled amethyst and emerald endpapers and a red silk marker.

•  On Mrs. Fitzherbert, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Bound as above, spine a little scratched. Small tear repaired in margin of frontispiece and a bit of paper supplied to repair one lower inner margin; insignificant little nicks to a very few sheets, and a crease in one lower outer corner. Clean, LOVELY.  (30075)

For BIOGRAPHIES, mostly 20th-Century
    “General Reading” & Inexpensive,  click here.
For FINE, ATTRACTIVE, & INTERESTING
               BINDINGS,  click here .

Selling Hair Tonic in Spain

•  Spanish advertising leaflet for a hair product made by a New York drug company founded in 1808 and still in business today — a company which catered from its beginnings to a Hispanic clientele, once calling itself “The Spanish Druggists to the World.” This is an early advertisement for the product (when the company applied for the patent in 1884, they claimed to have been selling the product for just over 20 years), which is still available under the name Tricopherous (or Tricofero) Hair Tonic; this promotion says the tonic was prepared “en San Martin de Provensals, Barcelona.” All the testimonials given here are dated 1863 and 1864.

The front page bears two vignettes of brunette beauties, one in the process of applying tonic and one with an impeccably arranged hairstyle.

•  Folded as issued, back page with upper outer corner bent and small nick to upper edge. Gently age-toned.  (29194)

For COMMERCE / TRADE /
        FINANCE / ECONOMICS,  click here.

Quaker Meditations — A Neat Compendium
  Two Women in the Contents — Womanly Provenance, Too

•  Law's mystically-inclined meditations sold vigorously in a number of English and American editions; they serve here as the introduction to an interesting selection of Christian inspirational readings from Philadelphia printer Joseph Crukshank—some writers named, and some not. The Considerations on Slavery are designated simply as those of a "number of different authors"; the Remarks on . . . Liquors, which aims to promote health and happiness rather than directly religious concerns, is attributed by ESTC to Anthony Benezet, as is the volume's last piece, the title of which is taken from its opening lines. Lady Elizabeth Hastings was the original for Aspasia in Steele's "Tatler" and a major donor to Oxford University Queen's College.

Elizabeth Webb, "an acknowledged minister among the people called Quakers," first encountered Prince George of Denmark's chaplain Boehm while on a visit to Great Britain; the missive with which she opened her subsequent correspondence with him, here, greatly inspired him and a number of his friends.

Provenance: With inscription reading "Miss Hannah Amelia Moore / Book a Present from her worthy / Friend Ruth Patton / 1789."


•  Law: ESTC W32233; Evans 16817; Hildeburn 3987. Webb: ESTC W13440; Evans 18295; Hildeburn 4409. Benezet: ESTC W6416; Evans 18355. Contemporary quarter sheep over paper-covered sides, the whole worn and abraded but the little volume quite sound. Light age-toning, occasional darker spots. Small chip in bottom margin of title-page; one leaf with paper flaw in lower corner, resulting in the loss of a very few letters.
For a “shelf” dedicated to the
FRIENDS/QUAKERS,  click here.

Sensational Story — Appropriate Illustrations

Click the images for enlargements.

•  By the author of Guy Livingstone and announced as an “Author's Edition” — “This edition is printed from advance sheets by special arrangement with the author,” stated on second leaf. With illustrations.

•  Library quarter sheep over marbled paper boards, spine with paper shelving label, covers pressure-stamped by a now-defunct library; rubbed/abraded, chipped, joints starting, title-page and several others rubber-stamped. Fly-leaf and title-leaf among a number of others loose and chipped, one chip barely touching one letter of the title; tears, mostly marginal but occasionally into text not taking any; a few creased corners and occasional light spots and stains. Front pastedown with bookbinder's label, back free endpaper with library charge pocket. Lacks four pages of advertisements at end; pp. 87–90 misbound between pp. 154 and 155! In many respects a “poor soul” of a book; in others, a very good representative of what it is.  (8337)

For Books for the BUSTED
            BIBLIOPHILE,  click here.

First Edition:  Jesuit Author, Jesuit Translator, Woman Printer

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition and first Mexican edition of Juan Francisco Lopez's translation of Giovanni Leti's Pratica utilissima delle dieci venerdi ad onore di S. Ignazio di Lojola, first published at Milan in 1705. Lopez (1699–1786) was born near Caracas, Venezuela, and entered the Society of Jesus as a novice at the Colegio de Tepozotlan, Mexico, in 1715.

The final 264 pages offer a life of St. Igantius Loyola.

Neither WorldCat nor NUC Pre-1956 locates any copies in U.S. libraries, but we know of an unreported copy at the John Carter Brown Library; WorldCat finds one copy in Chile and one in Mexico. The Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico and the OPAC of the BNE find no copies.

•  Medina, Mexico, 3905 (incorrect collation, not noting the first 268 pp.); DeBacker-Sommervogel, IV, 1950.   Contemporary vellum, inked “label” with title to upper spine in brown/black and a charming red-inked shelfmark at bottom. Light waterstaining/soil to lower outer corners at rear, with a bit of other foxing/soiling elsewhere; headers touched by binder's knife in one small section. A very good copy.  (29539)

For JESUITANA,  click here.

Ladies, Get Spry!

Easy to be a good cook now! 

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  A broadsheet containing eight recipes using Spry and being an advertisement for a Spry cookbook of 52 pages, containing “124 Thrifty, Tested Recipes” that was free on request.

•  Folded as issued. Very good condition.  (26013)

Slightly Random Reading . . . A Striking, Unusual Cover Treatment

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Two volumes from a popular and oft-reprinted survey of history originally published in 1883. The present books cover “The Old Pagan Civilizations,” “Jewish Heroes and Prophets,” “Great Women,” and “Great Rulers.”

Bindings: Publisher's textured dark brown cloth, covers with globe and torch design stamped in rich shades yellow, red, green, and black; spines embossed with modest "ruling" and author, title, publisher, volume numbers.

•  Vols. I and IV only. Bindings as above, slightly shaken, extremities rubbed. Pages clean.  (29812)

For books in handsome
                          PUBLISHER'S CLOTH,
  click here.

“Medieval Romance” from aNotable (later)Woman of Letters

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Scarce sole edition, first book only (of two) of a historical romance set in the 14th century. Several sources identify the author as Marie-Caroline de Murray, a.k.a. Caroline Murray, known as “la Muse Belgique,” amanuensis to the Prince de Ligne. OCLC locates only one U.S. institutional holding of this novel.

•  Manne, Nouveau dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes, 162; Le Mayeur, Les Belges, 340.   Contemporary plain paper-covered boards, spine with hand-inked volume label; binding stained, spine rubbed with small insect hole. Vol. I only. Inner margin of title-page repaired with loss of first letter of publisher's information line. Faint spotting and staining; trimmed closely, often shaving pagination and signatures. As interesting to see how this was produced, as it is frustrating to be unable to finish the story!  (26937)

Marilyn Monroe'sLAST Posed Photo Session

•  The 1964 issue of this popular annual includes an essay by Margaret Bourke-White, in addition to the 12-page portfolio showcasing Bert Stern's photographs of Marilyn Monroe (and much more).

•  Publisher's red cloth in dust wrapper, jacket not price-clipped; dust jacket rubbed and chipped at extremities and along upper back edge, light dustsoiling to portion of back cover.  (24682)

A Dissertation . . .

•  On marriage of minors; first printed in 1721. This is among our selection of 18th-century German dissertations and treatises on Law — each is in Latin; each is small quarto and removed from a one-time binding.

And Another, This One on DIVORCE . . .    Boehmer, Justus Henning, praeses. ...De ivre principis evangelici circa divortia.... Halae Magdeburgicae: Stanno Grunertiano, [1715]. Small 4to. [1] f., 70 pp.
$95.00

•  Inaug. diss. — Halle (Johann Friedrich Kayser, respondent), 1715.

•  Sometime bound in a nonce volume (removed).

For more 18TH-CENTURY GERMAN,
LATIN LANGUAGE
LEGAL DISSERTATIONS,  click here.

Yeats, Lawrence, Sassoon, Wharton, Sackville-West, & Many Others

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Sir Edward Marsh (1872–1953) was a patron of the arts, secretary to numerous prime ministers (most especially Winston Churchill, serving him long before his residence at 10 Downing Street), and a quiet but powerful member of London's homosexual community. Beginning in 1912 and continuing until the late 1940s he kept a small volume in which he asked poets to pen one of their poems. The first was Thomas Hardy and the last was C. Day Lewis, and in between were Kipling, Gosse, Wharton, T.E. Lawrence, D.H. Lawrence, Gogarty, Vita Sackville-West, Lytton Strache, Sigfried Sassoon, John Masefied, and 87 others. The manuscript now lives at Eton.

The poems, presented in full-color facsimile, are accompanied by a companion volume bearing an introduction by John Julius Norwich and a list of all the contributors to Marsh's “little book” with brief biographies. Edited by Michael Meredith, the volumes were “[d]esigned by Humphrey Stone. The facsimile reproduced and printed by Adrian Lack at The Senecio Press, Charlbury, Oxford on acid free Arjomari Rivoli paper. [with] Typesetting by Character Graphics, Taunton. Bound by The Fine Bindery, Wellingborough.”

Limited to 626 copies, 26 being specially bound and signed. This is copy 46 of the 600 copies bound in quarter morocco.

•  Publisher's quarter reddish-brown morocco with green paper sides, top edges gilt. Housed in the publisher's open-back slipcase, small part of one lower seam starting to crack; else fine. Books, lovely.  (30550)

A “Way” of Life — & DEATH

•  Unusual as a woman who printed under her own name, Mary Hinde was a successful printer and publisher of numerous Quaker items. Click the image to the left
for an enlargement.

•  Removed from a nonce volume. Wanting final leaf of advertisements. Light foxing and traces of soiling. Closely trimmed by the binder, with loss of last letters of lines on a few pages, but without loss of sense. (9216)

The 30 Years' Peace:  First American Edition, Much Enlarged

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First U.S. edition, significantly expanded from the English edition begun in 1849. Harriet Martineau (1802–76) was an intelligent, independent woman who successfully supported herself as an author and was a pioneer in observational sociology as well as a champion of women's rights. Here she offers a vividly written, populist account of the state of affairs in Britain and her global interests; this American edition adds a preliminary volume of background information on England's politics and economy during the 15 years prior to the start of the main history, as well as extending the closing date from the original 1846 to 1854. (Those interested in Martineau will definitely be interested in her “take” on this.)

•  NSTC 2M17389.   Publisher's textured brown cloth, spines with gilt-stamped title; vols. III and IV with spine heads chipped. Ex–social club library: paper shelving label on each spine head, call number on endpapers, title-pages and a few others rubber-stamped, no other markings. Light waterstaining to upper and lower inner portions of vols. I and II, upper only of vol. III; pages otherwise clean save for very faint age-toning. Paper a bit embrittled, with occasional short edge tears or corner chips, but the set quite suitable for use with reasonable care.  (28336)

For BRITISH POLITICS,  click here.

Children's Guide to Worthy Lives: Victorianly Appealing

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition: Biographies of upstanding international historical figures, aimed at juvenile audiences and heavily illustrated with both full-page and in-text steel engravings by various hands. Written with much emotion and imagination by an author known for her edifying children's works, these 50 lives include accounts of Joan of Arc, William Penn, Robert Clive, Mary Stuart, John Brown, Grace Darling, Abraham Lincoln, and others known for their heroism or virtue. The text was later published under the title Noble Lives and Brave Deeds, with WorldCat locating only three U.S. institutional holdings of this first appearance.

Binding:  Publisher's green cloth, front cover decorated with black-stamped oak branch motif, gilt-stamped title, and gilt-stamped vignette of a rescuer saving a drowning boy, spine gilt- and black-stamped, back cover blind-stamped.

•  NSTC 0497352.   Binding as above; spine slightly darkened, edges and extremities lightly rubbed, paper cracking at front hinge (inside). Front free endpaper with early pencilled ownership inscription. A very few scattered small spots of foxing, pages otherwise clean. Educational and pretty.  (30648)

A Typical Sort ofPrint-on-Paper Cover

Mayhew, Ira

•  Later edition. With numerous examples, and questions for the reader; the usefulness ofbookkeeping for women and importance of teaching that art to them are especially emphasized. Additional engraved title-page present.

•  Very good; light wear with some chipping around board edges. Hinges slightly tender. A few pages with small ink stains. Ownership inscription in pencil to front flyleaf. (1923)

For MATHEMATICS, 
click here.

A Universalist Women's Literary Annual: 1844

•  First edition: The “fourth blossom of our cherished Rose,” an annual collection of writings by Universalists. Among the contents are “The Dweller Apart” by Mrs. J.H. Scott, “The Minstrel and His Bride” by Caroline M. Sawyer, and several pieces by the editor. Also present is an article on the Actual vs. the Ideal, which opens with a critique of L.E.L. (the poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon) for indulging in flights of romantic fantasy rather than depicting the “glory of love in its power to beautify the affections of the mother, the wife, the sister, and the friend” (p. 219). Click the images for enlargements.

The volume is illustrated with an added engraved title-page and three steel-engraved plates, done by O. Pelton after designs by T.B. Read and Beaume, and by Charles Phillips after Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Signed binding: Hunter green embossed morocco, covers with cherub vignette in foliate frame; the embossed panel was designed by Francis N. Mitchell and engraved by Alex C. Morin, and the binding was done by Benjamin Bradley, with all three names stamped in panel. All edges gilt.

•  Faxon 713. On binding, see: Wolf, From Gothic Windows to Peacocks, 178; Spawn & Kinsella, American Signed Bindings, 53.   Binding as above, extremities with very minor rubbing; frontispiece lacking. Offsetting from plates, two pages with offsetting from now-absent laid-in item, scattered light spotting elsewhere. A gorgeous example of the binding, with interesting reading inside.  (26737)

For AMERICAN GIFT BOOKS,  click here.

Presentation CopyFit for a Queen

Melgarejo y Salafranca, José

•  First edition of this uncommon defense of the Church and its involvement with contemporary politics. The work is preceded by a portrait of the Count, here depicted in his study, with cigarette in hand.

Binding: Signed binding (with Bilbao’s ticket on front pastedown) of oxblood morocco, front and back covers framed in a wide gilt roll surrounding gilt-stamped coat of arms of Francesco de Assisi de Bourbon, Duc de Cadiz (consort to Isabella II of Spain); spine with four raised bands, compartments gilt extra, with author, title, and date gilt-stamped. Board edges and turn-ins with gilt rolls; all page edges gilt; blue moiré endpapers.

Provenance: Front pastedown with bookplate of Maria Christina, Queen of Spain.

•  Palau 350495. Binding as above, showing light wear, spine slightly faded; pastedowns with some offsetting, endpapers with spots of foxing. Rare and attractive.

For more Books with SPECIAL
           PROVENANCE,  click here.

Mere Angélique & Her Works

Port-Royal

•  History of the influential Cistercian convent at Port Royal and the development of the Jansenist movement nurtured therein, along with a biography of Mere Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d'Andilly, printed in three volumes. Attribution of this work is something of a confusing issue, as several histories were published with virtually identical titles; some of the one-volume 1739 editions can be differentiated by the subtitle Relations de la vie et des vertus de quelques unes des filles de la Mere Angelique, au nombre desquelles ont eté sa mere & ses soeurs qui sont mortes religieuses à Port Royal. Various sources cite the Sieur du Fossé, Jean Louis Barbeau de la Bruyère, Nicolas Fontaine, and others as authors of those works. Click the interior image for an enlargement.

•  Contemporary mottled calf, spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels, spine compartments with gilt-stamped floral decorations; covers mildly acid-pitted and considerably abraded, with leather lost at head of spine, corners, and joints. Spines with paper shelving labels or remnants thereof; front pastedowns each with bookplate. All edges marbled. Faint pencilled marginalia and bracketing; intermittent offsetting.  (22804)

For more SETS,  click here.
For CATHOLICA,  click here.

TheFemale School at Fuh-Chau

•  Wood engraved illustrations include "Ohio Wesleyan University," "Winged Lion from the Ruins of Nineveh," "View of Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania," "Female School at Fuh-Chau, China," and "Central Methodist Church, Newark, N.J."

•  Original front wrapper present, but not rear one. Some chipping and definite wear, especially along spine. Old ink notations. A good copy. (9383)

For more ALMANACS,  click here.
For an unillustrated, PDF-format catalogue of
some 250+ Almanacs,  CLICK HERE.

American Romance withMystic Oriental Overtones — In a Signed Binding

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Early, illustrated edition of a popular novel originally published in 1895 and later made into a movie titled “The Young Rajah,” starring Rudolph Valentino as a young, psychic Indian prince spirited away and adopted by a New England farming family. The romantic tale is decorated with a color-printed title-page vignette and seven other color-printed plates, from paintings by Arthur J. Keller.

Signed binding: Publisher's brick-colored cloth, front cover and spine with decorative gilt-stamped title and twining vine and flower motifs, front cover with “AR” monogram of designer Amy Richards (fl. 1896–1918).

•  Binding as above, slightly cocked and with corners a little bumped, spine very gently darkened and back cover with small spots, front cover with a few pinprick-type holes not detracting overly from overall appearance of design. Top edges gilt. A few page margins with faint smudges, otherwise clean.  (29769)

For more AMERICAN PUBLISHER'S
CLOTH BINDINGS,  click here.

Before There Were Crock-Pots

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Written by a teacher of domestic science and former dietitian of Manhattan State Hospital (not the novelist of Gone with the Wind fame), this how-to book offers both “economy of fuel” and “a mind free from all care of the meal that is cooking” (p. 7). The work describes techniques for building and assembling portable insulating pails, refrigerating boxes, insulated ovens, and hay-boxes, followed by250 recipes making use of slow cooking. The instructions are illustrated with in-text engravings; at the back of the volume is a series of experiments designed to demonstrate the insulating powers of different materials, the effects of food density upon the temperature maintained, detection of poisonous metals that may be dissolved from the cooker utensils, etc. This is the third edition, following the first of 1909.

•  Bitting 326 (for 1909 & 1911 eds.); Brown, Culinary Americana, 2637 (first ed. only). Not in Cagle & Stafford.   Publisher's dark green cloth, front cover and spine stamped in black with title and images of fireless cookers; mild rubbing to extremities, very faint scratches to back cover. Front hinge (inside) with small area of insect damage near head. A clean, solid copy.  (30292)

“Je me suis déterminée à entreprendre un commerce de détail”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  This is a series of model epistles written in a neat hand, many of them business- or finance-related: reference inquiries, requests for charity and responses to the same, discussions of land ownership and rental, transactions of goods, warnings of family members engaged in “libertinage,” debt collections, etc. They are often quite specific in their presumably imagined details and so an interesting “social history” source.

•  Signatures sewn; sewing starting to loosen. Pages age-toned with light spotting, more pronounced to first and last few leaves. Corners bumped.  (27501)

For more COMMERCE / TRADE /
        FINANCE / ECONOMICS,  click here.

One of theGreat Charitable Endeavors of the U.S. CIVIL WAR

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition: Well-documented contemporary account of a relief effort for the Union soldiers who passed through Philadelphia, “the great highway of travel between the East and the seat of rebellion” (p. 22). At William M. Cooper's storefront on Otsego Street, the ladies of the city provided food and coffee (at one point 100 gallons were being made per hour), nursed the sick and wounded, washed and mended clothes, and offered the comforts of home to any soldier who presented himself. The saloon operated from 26 May 1861 through 28 August 1865; details of the numbers of soldiers who passed through, what they received, and which volunteers organized what are provided here.

The volume opens with awood-engraved illustration of the saloon, done by Philadelphia artist Charles H. Reed. Author James was a medical officer in the Union army and also published Two Years in the Service, or, the Personal Recollections of a Medical Officer and A Complete History of the Great Rebellion; or, the Civil War in the United States.

Binding:  Publisher's textured green cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped vignette of the shop and a very large American flag, taken from the frontispiece; back cover with same vignette in blind. Spine with a bit of gilt embellishment at top and bottom, gilt-stamped title.

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with inked inscription: “Compliments of Mrs. A. Horner Phila. July 4th 1876”; also with rubber-stamp of Samuel Hoffman, a Philadelphia collector and dealer of presidential and political material; and finally with inked inscription: “To the LIbrarian U. of Chattanooga Sept. 13, 1957 from John C. Daub,” a Pittsburgh rare book dealer.

•  Sabin 50402.   Bound as above, corners and spine extremities rubbed. Front free endpaper with inscriptions and stamp as above. A clean, solid copy.  (29560)

For more U.S. CIVIL WAR offerings, 
click here.

Printed by Lydia Bailey — Hannah's Youthful Feminism?

•  In her preface to The Search, More writes, "It has been so hackneyed a practice for Authors to pretend, that imperfect copies of their works had crept abroad, that the Writer of the following Pastoral is almost ashamed to allege this, as the real cause of the present publication." The first authorized edition appeared in 1773 although More (b. 1745) wrote it when she was 15 years old; the Yale Feminist Companion notes that her "improving pastoral play for girls' schools . . . celebrates women writers (760)."

The Search is in verse and Joseph in prose. The frontispiece is an engraving by B. Tanner after Stothard's original. Tanner was one of America's premier early engravers upon steel and copper. A student of Peter Maverick's, he settled in Philadelphia in 1805 and continued in the Quaker City until 1845. In addition to engravings for book illustration, he produced line and stipple portraits, scenes, and views. Here his offering is printed on a lighter weight stock than the rest of the volume and, as in all copies we have seen, is browned.

•  Rosenbach, Early American Children's Books, 442; Shaw & Shoemaker 23434. On Tanner, see: Stauffer, American Engravers upon Copper and Steel, I: 243–45. Beyond the scope of Welch. Publisher's salmon paper over paste boards. Clean with no tears. Frontispiece browned as noted, with two lighter spots. A very good copy.

An Attractive American Set in Seven Volumes

Click the images for enlargements.

•  “Complete in seven volumes.” Each volume has an added engraved title-page, with vignette, and the first one offersa frontispiece portrait from the painting by Opie.

A newspaper clipping of a portrait of Hannah More taken from an engraving after the painting by H. W. Pickersgill, lies loose inside first volume.

•  Contemporary half red sheep in imitation of morocco over marbled cloth-covered boards, spines with gilt-accented raised bands, gilt lettering on spines. All edges marbled. Leather rubbed and scraped with some chips on spine, joints, and edges; pp. 421–34 of vol. VI have some shallow tears and chips from being bumped, fore-edge of one leaf folded back, without affecting text. Front joint of vol. VII starting from top edge. Some foxing throughout. Clean and complete.  (21439)

Defending Marie de Médici

•  Vol. I of the scarce second edition, following the first of 1637: Polemics regarding Marie de Médicis, Cardinal Richelieu, and Louis XIII, written by the Sieur de Saint-Germain, one of the most prolific pamphleteers of the period. The volume contains “Remonstrance au Roy,” “Vrais et bons advis de François Fidèle,” “Charitable remonstrance de Caton Chrestien a monseigneur l’eminentissime Cardinal de Richelieu,” and “Advertissement de Nicocleon à Cleonville, sur son advertissement aux provinces.” The second volume, Pieces curieuses pour la deffence de la royne mere du roy Louys XIII, is not present here. Single-click the interior image for an enlargement.

Uncommon.  Searches of OCLC, RLIN, and NUC Pre-1956 find only three U.S. holdings of this edition.

•  Contemporary vellum, spine with early inked title; vellum darkened, front cover with faded early inked inscription. Back free endpaper and final blank leaf lacking; front free endpaper with early inked inscription, title-page with contemporary inked ownership inscription in lower margin. Some light foxing; one early inked marginal annotation. Vol. I only; the set rare enough to make offering the “odd” volume reasonable!

“A Blessing to Mothers”

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Annually issued patent medicine promotional cookbook, pushing Brown's Bronchial Troches and the infamous Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup in between recipes for cottage pudding, “Philadelphia Ice-Cream,” oyster macaroni, turkey hash, and other practical dishes. Many of the advertisements are aimed at mothers whose children are suffering from worms or teething pains; the front cover vignette depicts a sweet-faced, composed lady tending an infant while two well-dressed young girls look on.

•  Brown, Culinary Americana, 2397; Cagle & Stafford 894.   Sewn in publisher's printed yellow paper wrappers; wrappers with spots of light staining, upper outer corner bumped (carrying through first 14 pp.). Pages age-toned, otherwise clean. A solid, clean copy of an item ephemeral in nature.  (30677)

TO Part VI . . .

PLACE AN ORDER   |   E-MAIL US   |   PRB&M HOME