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)

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)

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.

From the Libraries ofTwo Organizations That Were
       SUPPRESSED a Century Apart

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Sole edition and sole volume ever published although more were planned. “Third Orders . . . are associations of the laity [bothmale and female] whose members, while living a secular life, strive after Christian perfection by observing a a papally approved rule, under the direction and in the spirit of a religious order (New Catholic Encyclopedia, XIV, 93–96). Ledesma's work is a handbook for members of the Mexican Third Order of St. Francis containing a manual of practices, an organizational guide, a compendium of historical documents, a martyrology, and a history of the Third Order of St. Francis.

In the section of estimable lives that are meant to serve as models are capsule biographies of: the ex–black slave Antonio de Calatagirona (who lived in Sicily), Matias de Medina Gamez (of Mexico City), Anachoreta Juan Baptista de Jesus (native of Spain, who lived in Tlaxcala, Mexico), Pedro de San Joseph Vetancur (of Guatemala), and Francisco Pardo (born in Castile and a resident of Puebla).

Ledesma, a native-born Mexican and the Comisario Visitador of Mexico City's “branch” of the Third Order of St. Francis, indicates in the margins, via side- and shouldernotes, the sources of his information, showing he had access to a library containing books from all over Europe, Mexico, and Guatemala.

The volume also has literary and printing history interest:  Among the prefatory matter is a sonnet by Bernabe Perez de Turcios; and Maria de Benevides, one of the colonial New World's notable printers, produced this with wide margins, some nice typography and initials, and a good woodcut of the Order's emblem.

Provenance:  Marca de fuego of the Jesuit Colegio de San Pedro y San Pablo of Mexico City on the upper edges; ownership-stamp of the Universidad Nacional y Pontificia on folio 1.

Searches of NUC Pre-1956 and WorldCat locate only two copies in U.S. libraries, and searches of the Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico and the OPAC of the Spanish National Library find no copies in Spain. We do find a copy at the National Library of Mexico.

•  Medina, Mexico, 1446; Beristain, II, 153; Palau 134128.   Mid-19th-century quarter brown leather with mottled paper sides and elegant foliate tooling to the spine; all edges speckled blue. Waterstain in lower outside corner of the margins of four leaves in the prefatory matter; a small amount of other spotting/foxing intermittently. A rather nice copy of an uncommon and important work.  (29631)

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)

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)

A Moral Tale?

•  Title woodcut vignette of a woman kneeling at an altar. In the six-page ballad “Fair Rosamond”, Henry II builds a tower with a hundred and fifty entrances at Woodstock, near Oxford. The tower serves as a safe house for his mistress, the fair Rosamond. So complex is its architecture that those who enter must follow a thread to find their way out. When Henry has to leave to put down a rebellion in France, the jealous Queen Eleanor wounds the knight who guards the tower, follows the thread to Rosamond's chamber and murders her by forcing her to drink poison.

This Stirling printing is rare. There is also a Glasgow printing of which OCLC locates only 6 copies worldwide.

•  Original self wrappers (unbound, removed). The bottom corner of the second leaf is lightly chipped and the pages are somewhat darkened. Good. (17552)

“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)

CAN a Southern Belle Find Love with aDay-Laborer?

•  Originally written for the Ladies' Home Journal and first published in book form in 1899, this novel tells the tale of a progressive Virginia lass, ill at ease with the stodgy traditionalism of her aristocratic family, who falls in love with a workman who may not be what he seems. Much discussion of class differences ensues.

The volume is illustrated with afrontispiece and 10 plates by painter Henry S. Hubbell.

Signed binding: Publisher's tan-with-green-tint cloth, front cover with title and Art Nouveau iris design stamped in pink and green surrounding a color-printed portrait of the heroine; spine with green-stamped title. Binding with the distinctive monogram of prolific book designer Amy M. Sacker (1873–1965).

•  Not in Wright.   Binding as above, clean and fresh; endpapers with areas of offsetting. One leaf with lower outer corner torn away; half-title with pencillings. A very attractive copy.  (28587)

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.

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)

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)

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)

TO Part X . . .

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