The play's length is that of a "filler" piece in a jam-packed 19th-century theatrical night of three or four plays (or parts thereof) and other "entertainments"—or, the length of a school or home production. The style is distinctly amateur/naive.  E.g., the euphonious exotic names are far from consistently Chinese and one character is "carried [from his 'chinese cottage'] to the ganges"; the author confuses exit and exeunt ("Exeunt Priest")—we wonder if this blithe vagueness as to geography and world cultures, and the seeming lack of even basic classical education, suggest a lively-minded and enthusiastically play-going but unrigorously schooled female writer?

Provenance: Gift inscription: "Horace W. Smith, Esq. to W.W., 1863." A pencil note says "By J. Howard Payne in his handwriting, W.W."—but the handwriting does not match that of Payne's MSS. at Yale and Brown Universities.

•  First leaf dust-soiled and now separated. Edges of some leaves chipped costing a few letters and, very rarely, an entire word; lost letters and words are easily supplied by context. Comfortable, for working with.

Binding:  Publisher's textured tan cloth, covers and spine with stamped in brown with small pictorial vignettes evoking “the road”; title and author stamped in gilt. All edges subtly blue-sprinkled.

•  Spine very slightly darkened and virtually no wear otherwise. One signature loosening; one page with a scrape (with a bit of loss to type), this and a few others with the ink's having offset or adhered pages together (usually separable); and all otherwise clean and crisp. A handsome copy.  (26680)

Uncommon: OCLC and NUC Pre-1956 find only four holdings.

Provenance:  Author's copy, with his signagture (“A.C. Bunn”) on front wrapper.

•  Recent grey paper-covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped black paper title-label. Original paper wrappers bound in, front wrapper with inscription as above. Creased with repairs to margins of most leaves (but not the frontispiece); clean.  (25376)

•  Not in Brinkman. Contemporary cartonné binding covered in decorative printed paper, shown above right; spine showing a small undarkened area where label is now lacking. Front joint tender. Lacking two leaves, pp. 33/34 and 39/40; some signatures loosening. Pages with a very few small spots, otherwise clean and pleasing.

Languages charted in these tables include “Tartares Mouantcheoux,” Tamoul, Telongou, Persian (ancient and modern), Armenian, Russian (ancient and modern), Coptic, Hebrew, etc., with the engraving done by master artisan Robert Bénard (fl. 1750–85).

•  Half green calf with green marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title; slight wear to corners and spine extremities. Lacking one plate (#25).  (24823)

The volume is illustrated with a total of25 wood-engraved plates and a wood-engraved title-page vignette depicting architectural views, native dress, dwellings, and religious sites.

•  American Imprints 12263; Sabin 21891.   Late 19th-century half roan with marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title; edges and extremities showing moderate shelf wear (refurbished) . Front pastedown with old seminary bookplate, frontispiece and title-page with faded rubber-stamps of the same, one preliminary leaf with inked numeral in lower margin. Most plates with offsetting, pages with scattered light spotting; otherwise clean and unmarked. In fact, a nice copy of an interesting missionary and in part ethnographical work.  (25507)

printing operations

•  NSTC 2L4183; not in Goldsmiths'-Kress. Removed from a nonce volume and now in a Mylar folder. Pages clean. (10991)

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

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Prize copy: Front free endpaper with inked presentation inscription from a school principal, noting the recipient's perfect attendance in 1905–06.

•  Publisher's orange cloth, front cover and spine with black-stamped title, front cover with black-stamped pictorial vignette; binding showing minor wear but overall very clean and attractive. Front free endpaper with inscription as above. Pages clean.  (26697)

This set includes two volumes of supplemental text, adding a number of entries. The first edition was followed by two volumes of supplemental plates, not present here and not called for: Graesse describes this edition as “sans grav.”

The pagination is erratic in a number of places; there is a numbering gap from 2342 to 2351 between vols. IV and V, but the text and signatures are uninterrupted.

Uncommon: OCLC locates only two U.S. institutional holdings of this second edition.

Provenance: Most volumes with small inked ownership inscription in an outer margin: “G.R.W.” the mark of William Rollinson Whittingham (1805–79), fourth Episcopal Bishop of Maryland and an enthusiastic book collector.

•  Brunet, IV, 851; Graesse, V, 429. Not in Sabin.   Contemporary half binding, recently rebacked with tan paper, spines with printed paper labels; boards rubbed and faded with small chips, one vol. with front cover waterstained. Foxing almost throughout, generally no worse than moderate; light waterstaining in upper margins of vol. I; one leaf in vol. VII with lower outer portion torn away, with loss of words from about 18 lines on each side. Vol. II with printer's error replacing pp. 1065–72 with duplicates of pp. 1057–64; pagination erratic in other places. Most vols. with ownership mark as above; vol. VI with one pencilled and one inked marginal annotation.  (25862)

Uncommon.  OCLC locates only five copies in the U.S., of which one has been deaccessioned.

•  Recent boards covered with German-style brown paper specked with black; paper label on front cover. Paper a little cockled on back cover. Old shelving numbers on verso of title-page and a four-digit number inked in lower margin of leaf A1; few dog-ears and one pencilled note.  (24768)