WOMEN

American Gift Book — TwoILLUMINATED Leaves  

•  Ornately bound gift book, illustrated with four steel-engraved plates. This is a different work from both the New York item of the same name published in 1847 and the literary collection of the same name edited by Sarah Josepha Hale; the present volume opens with an illuminated presentation leaf (left blank here) and illuminated additional title-page, while the text begins with Felicia Hemans's “Woman and Fame” and closes with Southey's “Remembrance.” The publisher issued the Wreath in the present undated variant and also with a publication line giving 1855.

Binding: Publisher's red morocco, covers and spine gilt extra in foliate designs with cherubim at play. All edges gilt.

•  Faxon 457a.   Binding as above, front joint just starting at top and bottom, edges and extremities showing very slight wear, gilt slightest bit rubbed in spots; overall bright and handsome. Light age-toning and spotting throughout.In remarkably good condition, unusually bright.  (20886)

“ There is One Above, Who Loves Thee with Unchangeable Love”

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•  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)

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.

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)

George Eliot's PartnerWrites about Biology

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•  First American edition: A series of popular science essays originally published in the Cornhill Magazine, including a summary and qualified endorsement of Darwinism. The essays, cast in conversational terms and as a sort of biological travelogue — “Come with me” — are illustrated with a dozen-plus in-text wood engravings depicting various organisms.

•  Publisher's embossed red rippled cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped beetle, spine with gilt-stamped title; somewhat rubbed, spine darkened, covers with spots of discoloration. Ex–social club library: paper shelving label at head of spine, call number on endpapers, rubber-stamp on title-page and two others, no other markings. Pages faintly age-toned; clean.  (27394)

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)

In PRAISE of theVirgin of Guadalupe

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•  “Rare” barely does justice to this example of Novohispanic baroque poetry, explication, printing, and Mariology.

The forematter here prepares us for the density and theme of the main text by presenting us with sonnets, decimas, epigrams, and anagrams. We also find a well-wrought large woodcut of the coat of arms of archbishop Payo de Ribera, the author's literary patron.

In a throwback to incunabula-style presentation of explicated text, López de Abiles' neo-Latin poetic tribute to the Virgin of Guadalupe is printed in the middle of each page and his many and lengthy notes explaining obscure words, passages, and meanings surround the text. Thus, every page is filled almost to overflowing with type of varying sizes of roman and italic, leaving virtually no room for margins and presenting the eye with much more than it can quickly comprehend.

This ambitiously designed production is from the press of one of Mexico's famous 17th-century woman printers, the Widow Calderón.

The work ends with a short essay addressed to López de Abiles by Lic. Miguel Sánchez and with anagrams by him as well. Sánchez was the author of Imagen de la Virgen Maria madre de dios de Guadalupe, milagrosamente aparecida en la ciudad de Mexico that had appeared in 1648. As a researcher with considerable knowledge of the Virgin of Guadalupe, he praises López de Abiles in no uncertain terms.

For some unfathomable reason Medina lists this under the extensive half-title — Poeticum viridarium in honorem, laudationem, et obsequium purae admodum ... Mariae: eiusdem dominae miraculosae Mexiceae imaginis de Guadalupe.... — and the cataloguer at the University of Arizona has blindly followed Medina down that road so that the WorldCat record is not findable via the real title.

Rarity: WorldCat locates only one copy worldwide but we know of two others. No additional copies were located via COPAC, Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico, Metabase, or the OPACs of the Spanish National Library, the Mexican National Library, and the British Library.

•  Medina, Mexico, 1016; Andrade 582; Grajales & Burrus, Bibliografia guadalupana, 82.   In later wrappers, a little tattered at the spine. Lacks the half-title and the plate. Top margins of last 10 leaves rodent-gnawed with loss of paper but not of text, although a few letters are touched and the headline words “Segundum Anagramma” lost to that animal. Some light staining, front and rear. In all, a good if damaged copy of an important rarity.  (26413)

For a whole short shelf devoted
      to “GUADELUPANA” — y
      otras Apariciones Marianas
      Mexicanas — click here.

Polygamy isENJOINED upon Christians?

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•  Third and best edition of a treatise in defense of polygamy, originally titled Theophili Aletaei discursus politicus de Polygamia. This greatly expanded version was printed in Lund, Sweden; earlier editions were much briefer. Depending on which account you prefer, this scandalous work may have been written either to please the author's patron, who had grown tired of his wife, or to advance the author's dream of founding a polygamous sect. Lyserus, also known as Lyser or Leyser, was a Lutheran pastor before the infamy this book earned him sent him wandering in exile; he travelled through Germany, Denmark, and Sweden until his death in 1684.

According to the online cataloguing of this book at Brigham Young University, “Early editions [were] burnt by [the] hangman in Denmark (1676); in Sweden (1679) . . . the possession of a copy meant a 1000 ducat fine. This edition was added to the Index of forbidden books in 1687.” It is often held today in medical libraries.

•  Graesse, I, 68.   17th-century speckled calf, spine gilt extra with gilt-stamped leather title-label; leather chipped at top of spine with front joint open (though holding), abraded/pitted, and rubbed through to paste boards at corners. Front pastedown with Parisian bookseller's ticket; front free endpaper with pencilled annotation; back pastedown with rubber-stamped date in 1908. Slip of old printed cataloguing laid in.  (23549)

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

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•  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)

What to Serve for Breakfast, Luncheon, Dinner, & Supper

•  “Every day dishes simple to make and wholesome to eat,” from the makers of Rumford Baking Powder. Not all the recipes in this promotion for the Rumford Complete Cook Book (which could be obtained for free in exchange for 10 cards from pound cans of baking powder) include the sponsoring product, although many do. The chromolithographed front cover illustration depicts a rosy-cheeked young girl in a fur-lined winter bonnet and coat.

•  Not in Brown, Culinary Americana (describes Rumford Cook Book and Complete Cook Book only).   Publisher's printed paper wrappers, with hanging loop; wrapper rubbed, with corners creased — and still charming. Pages with light spotting, one upper outer corner creased and darkened, one recipe with title bracketed in pencil — a copy apparently cooked from!  (26056)

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)

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 UniversalistWomen's Literary Annual: 1843

•  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)

A Universalist Women's Literary Annual: 1844

•  First edition: The fifth volume of an annual collection of writings by Universalists. Among the contents are “Human Life” by Horace Greeley, “The Astrologer” by Mary Ann H. Dodd, “Joan of Arc in Prison” by Luella J.B. Case, and “The Uncultivated Garden” by Julia A. Fletcher, as well as several pieces by the editor. Click the images for enlargements.

The volume is illustrated with four steel-engraved plates and an additional engraved title-page by various hands.

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 714. On binding, see: Wolf, From Gothic Windows to Peacocks, 178; Spawn & Kinsella, American Signed Bindings, 53.   Binding as above, showing virtually no wear. A few light spots, pages mostly clean. Dried flower laid in. It is hard to imagine a better copy of this lovely annual.  (26743)

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