AMERICANA AFTER 1820

“This Teaches Us . . . ”

•  Early edition, following the first of the previous year, of these charming fables "for the fair sex."

•  Signed binding with unfortunately unidentifiable initials! Publisher's quarter brown cloth over paper-covered sides, printed pictorial paper front cover, spine with gilt-stamped title; cream-colored paper slightly darkened, with very minor rubbing over corners. (15006)

“She Who Would be Mistress ofHer Own Home”

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•  Lovely, very giftable cookbook originally intended for the novice homemaker expected to provide “dainty, appetizing, and prettily served” meals for her new husband. The volume, designed with a thumb index for ease of use, features a color-printed affixed front cover illustration and matching frontispiece depicting an elegant Edwardian bride, as well as attractive, period-evocative color-printed illustrations dividing the internal sections. Several pages are provided for “contributed recipes,” unused here. The author proudly describes this work asboth “wondrously dainty” and “entirely practical” (p. 5).

•  Bitting 114; Brown, Culinary Americana, 770.   Publisher's mauve cloth, front cover framed in gilt with gilt-stamped “wedding bell” corner decorations and with affixed chromolithographed illustration, spine with gilt-stamped title; corners and spine extremities lightly rubbed, back cover with small area of discoloration. Some corners creased; four pages with spots of staining. One leaf with short tear from upper margin, touching header without loss. We suspect that this was cooked from, but very carefully; and we like it that one spotted page offers the recipe for “Kisses.”  (26616)

An 1892 YALE Dissertation Davidson, Charles. Studies in the English mystery plays. A thesis presented to the Philosophical Faculty of Yale University. New Haven: Yale University, 1892. 8vo. 174 pp.
$30.00

•  Doctoral thesis analyzing religious drama.

•  Fair in printed paper wrappers, front cover torn nearly in half.   (438)

“If You Have a Dollar, or Work for One,
  YOU are Interested in the Contents ofThis Book”

•  First edition: Pragmatic advice on achieving financial independence for working people of all classes — laborers, farmers, crafts- and tradespeople, clerks, lawyers, physicians, investors, etc. Davies recommends training both boys and girls from an early age in the realities of “the affairs of life” (p. 65); there are chapters on both banking and insurance. Click the images for enlargements.

•  Not in Goldsmiths'-Kress.   Publisher's textured violet cloth, covers blind-stamped, spine with gilt-stamped title; binding cocked, cloth rubbed and faded, spine sunned. Front hinge (inside) cracked, back hinge tender. Ex–social club library: call number on front pastedown, front free endpaper lacking, rubber-stamp on title-page and several others; no other markings. Some light smudges, pages mostly clean. Very interesting reading from a variety of perspectives.  (26503)

The Alabama Claims

•  Reprinted from the New York Herald of January 4, 1878.

•  Original printed wrappers; cracked on lower spine; chip off at upper spine. Pamphlet loose in its covers. Pages clean, untrimmed. (559)



 

Davis Himself on the Civil War — Many Plates & Maps

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•  First edition of Davis's arguments, constitutional and otherwise, in favor of secession, states' rights, and slavery; and his defense of his conduct and that of the Confederacy. The two volumes are illustrated with a total of 19 steel-engraved plates, including numerous portraits, and 14 maps, 13 of which are oversized and folding.

•  Howes D120.   Publisher's pebbled brown cloth, covers framed in blind with central gilt-stamped horse and rider medallion on front, spines with gilt-stamped title; edges/extremities lightly rubbed and spines each with a patch lightened (moreso to vol. I). Ex–social club library: call number on endpapers, title-pages rubber-stamped. Minor offsetting from some plates, pages otherwise clean.  (26900)

A Practical Yet Picturesque View ofthe U.S. & Canada

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•  First edition. The author (whose name is given here as Fred. Fitzgerald De Roos, but often cited as John Frederick Fitzgerald De Ros), was at the time of this publication a lieutenant of the Royal Navy. His American journey took him from New York through New Brunswick and Trenton to Washington and Baltimore before heading back north through Philadelphia and Boston to reach Nova Scotia and Canada; in his travelogue, the author proves himself a curious yet gentlemanly observer not only of America's shipbuilding, marine affairs, and naval strength, but also of her customs, culture, women, and interactions with “the conquered Indian” (p. 165).

The volume is illustrated withan oversized, folding panoramic view of Quebec along with 13 other plates, including two maps of the Niagara Falls region; views of Bristol, DE, and Chester, MA; and a bucolic depiction of the “Water Works of Philadelphia on the Schuylkil,” all engraved after De Roos's own designs.

Binding:  Contemporary hunter green diced calf, covers framed in gilt double fillets and an interior blind rule with small gilt-stamped corner fleurons; spine gilt extra in five compartments. Board edges and turn-ins decorated with gilt rolls; rich blue marbled endpapers; all edges marbled.

•  Howes D268; Sabin 19677.   Binding as above, corners/joints scuffed and back joint starting from head; spine a little sunned, evenly and attractively. Scattered light foxing, pages and plates otherwise clean. An admirable book in a nice copy.  (26665)

“Apology”NOT Accepted!

•  Given the hotbed of abolitionism that Boston was, during the three decades leading up to the Civil War, one must wonder what Eliot was thinking when he voted in favor of the Fugitive Slave Act! Well, not wanting to leave his constituency in the dark, he wrote a defense of his action and published it in a letter to the Advertiser on 29 October 1850. His apology did not sit well with Dexter (here signing himself "Hancock"), who wrote this scathing rebuttal.

First edition.

•  Sabin 19890; Dumond 63. Sewn, in original printed wrappers, slightly chipped. Five-digit number stamped on front wrapper, and a neat paper label at upper left corner. A very nice copy.

"The Idiot Lad" — "The Women of Mumbles Head"

•  Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, Charles Dickens, and a number of mostly-forgotten women. Back cover offers Stunt Songs for Social Sings, including "I Want to Be a Jolly Girl."

•  Ornate, polychromatic Victorian-era front wrapper. Excellent condition.

One for Tiny Tots

•  Buy this for your tot, make him/her learn eight items by rote, and enter the darling in a talent show

•  Publisher's pale blue wrappers printed in red. A fine copy. (7945)

For more AMERICAN RECITERS, & an
            explanation of what they ARE,  click here.

Who Wrote the Book of Mormon?

•  First edition. An exposé related to the Rev. Solomon Spaulding, whose “The Manuscript Found” is claimed by some to be the source of the Book of Mormon. With an introduction by Thurlow Reed. Publisher's catalogue in the back.

Beyond matters of authorship, there is quite a lot of general Mormon history here, including a good deal on polygamy; the perspective is not friendly.

Provenance:  From the libraries of the Rev. C. C. Bitting and Crozer Theological Seminary.

•  Flake & Draper 2832.   Publisher's green cloth, spine chipped at head and foot. Title-page separated from binding, but present; shallow chipping along edges. Short closed tears to top edge of pp. 29–32 and 103–106 and outer edge of one page chipped; several page corners chipped/creased. Ex-library with bookplate, card and pocket, pressure-stamp on title-page, inked numeral, penciled notation, two rubber-stamps. A few penciled check-marks.  (24434)

Pleasingly Bound & Illustrated

•  Second edition, third printing: edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, this is illustrated with photographs of persons mentioned and specimens of Emily Dickinson’s autograph.

•  BAL 4685. Handsome green publisher’s cloth; front cover gilt-stamped with title at top and Indian Pipes in lower right corner: corners rubbed with a little loss of cloth. Some very shallow chipping on corners, and traces of soiling on edges and endpapers. An attractive book.

If It Bleeds, It Leads!

•  1848 edition of Dickinson’s almanac series. Although a few public occasions of genuine merit are noted in the calendar of “general events in 1847,” most of the listings run towards the shocking and scandalous, especially involving death by shooting or other catastrophe (“A little girl in Philadelphia died in consequence of over-exertion, by jumping a rope” for May 24); also listed for the reader’s edification are all the fires that took place in Boston in 1847.

The volume opens with an oversized, folding map of the city, with a note that the map is a specimen of a new type of plate printing. An advertisement on the back free endpaper mentions that Dickinson has “sold out his extensive Printing Office . . . [and] will now apply his whole attention to his favorite business, the manufacture of Printing Type,” providing stereotyping and music printing as well as “more than 120 different kinds of Job Type.”

Binding: Signed by Damrell & Moore of Boston, with their blind-stamp on the back cover: Brown cloth embossed with foliate designs, front cover with gilt-stamped decorative title.

•  Binding as above, covers with small, fairly unobtrusive spots of discoloration, cloth a bit rubbed over corners and edges and chipping over spine extremities. Map with small holes to two corners; pages clean, with memoranda leaves unused.

A GORGEOUSBRIGHT RED COVER

•  Early edition of this popular collection of proverbs, originally printed in 1850 and here in a highly decorated binding. There are also several parables, and at the end are apocalyptic dreams. The “proverbs” are pithy preachings of the author. Click the image to the right
for an enlargement.

Binding: Publisher’s red morocco, covers framed in gilt rolls, front cover with gilt-stamped angel vignette and title, back cover with gilt-stamped urn, spine gilt extra.

•  Binding as above, edges and extremities rubbed with cloth chipping over spine head, spine somewhat darkened and with gilt dimmed. Pages gently age-toned, with a few lightly foxed; first few leaves loosening.

“The Great Discovery” — GOLD

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•  First edition: History of California immediately prior to and during the gold rush, based on the author's firsthand observations and on facts “gathered from living witnesses” (p. 9). The volume is illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of John Augustus Sutter and with two steel-engraved plates.

•  Sabin 21232; Gaer, California Literature of the Gold-Rush, 25; Cowan & Cowan, Bibliography of the History of California, 187.   Publisher's textured maroon cloth, front cover with very decorative gilt-stamped title presentation; lightly rubbed, spine sunned and with some other sort of discoloration at top. Ex–social club library: front free endpaper and fly-leaf with inked numerals in a 19th-century hand; title-page, one plate, and one other page rubber-stamped. Pages faintly age-toned, otherwise clean. A nice little book.  (26296)

Dunbar's First Novel

•  First edition of Dunbar's first novel: The child of a notorious drunkard attempts to overcome both his Ohio community's prejudice against him and his guardian's rigid morality. Dunbar, whose parents had been slaves, was a seminal African-American writer of prose and poetry famed for both his dialect and standard English pieces.

Signed binding: Publisher's blue-gray cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title in black and silver framework, signed “GWE” (George Wharton Edwards). The front cover and spine give the author's name as Lawrence rather than Laurence, making this BAL's binding state A.

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Provenance:  Front free endpaper with inked gift inscription to journalist, lecturer, and poet Nixon Waterman from Edward F. Burns, likely the poet and Boston Globe editor of that name.

•  BAL 4923; Wright, III, 1671.   Binding as above, a little cocked, spine sunned, extremities lightly rubbed; front cover clean and bright. Front free endpaper with inked gift inscription (see above) dated Christmas 1898, half-title with extensive inked inscription dated 1953. The latter hand has made a checkmark beside almost every page number as well as occasional annotations and marks of emphasis; pages otherwise clean.  (26651)

Creationist Guide to the Natural World — A Pretty 4-Volume Set

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•  First U.S. edition of this widely read contemplation of of natural theology, here with “important additions and some modifications to adapt it to American readers,” done by the Rev. Frances William Pitt Greenwood. The work, which was endorsed by the Massachusetts Board of Education, was praised by Edgar Allan Poe as a “well-arranged and well-digested compendium, embracing a vast amount of information upon the various topics of physical science, and especially well adapted to those educational purposes for which the volumes are designed” (Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, March 1840). The practical sciences of agriculture, husbandry, and manufacture have their places here along with much on the physical and biological worlds as such.

Bindings: Publisher's half green morocco and marbled paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped title and decorations; very attractive.

•  American Imprints 55446.   Spines slightly darkened; lightly rubbed. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplates, call number on endpapers, no other markings. A clean, sound handsome set.  (27171)

Printed D.C. 1901 — Purchased Y.T. 1907

•  Yukon verse, written by Gold Rush poet Dunham, who also designed the cover art. The front free endpaper bears two inked inscriptions in the same hand, one reading “Marguerite Lux / Syracuse, N.Y.” and the other “Dawson City Y.T. [Yukon Territory] / July 1907.” The back pastedown bears the ticket of a bookseller located in Dawson.

•  Publisher's cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title and landscape vignette, spine with gilt-stamped title; binding worn over extremities, with gilt showing some rubbing. Pages clean.  (5701)

TO Part VIII . . .

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