This is an untrimmed copy in original boards, with 24 pages of advertising for Carey publications bound in at the front of the volume. The preliminary map, engraved by John Bower, has hand-colored border lines; this American edition does not call for the plates found in the English first, but does include in-text depictions of several “Ethiopic inscriptions.”

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 33864; NSTC 2S3118. Publisher’s quarter tan paper over light blue paper–covered sides; front cover detached and back joint cracked, binding spotted, paper cracked and split along spine, spine label now absent and replaced with hand-inked title, spine with later paper shelving label. Front pastedown with institutional bookplate, front free endpaper with inked ownership inscription dated 1829. Half-title with portion of outer margin torn away (not touching text) and laid in. Map lightly foxed, with two short tears along folds. Pages age-toned, with occasional spots of foxing.  (19413)

The volume is illustrated withfour copper-engraved plates, being a frontispiece showing two well-dressed children and their mamma discovering a lark's nest, a group of Africans attacked by a lion, the fashionable mamma plus all three children and their dog in a flowery arbor, and a final engraved advertisement for Darton's “maps, charts, & plans [and] extensive collections of books for the use of children and young people.” The first three plates are dated 1823. Darton first published the present work in 1818 and again in 1820; this third edition is, like the previous two, now uncommon.

Provenance:  Tipped-in engraved presentation leaf filled out to John Lewis Provoost by his friend Miss S. Lock of New York; front free endpaper with early pencilled inscription of Charlotte E. Marshall. Later in the children's book collection of Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  For first ed., see Gumuchian 2589 & Osborne Collection, p. 708.   Contemporary marbled paper–covered boards with roan shelfback, spine with gilt-stamped title; sides a little scuffed, spine leather worn and cracked with head chipped. Hinges (inside) tender, sewing just starting to loosen; pages age-toned with offsetting from plates and a handful of spots of foxing, front pastedown withearly pencilled profile doodle.  (40791)

•  Library Company, Afro-Americana (rev. ed.), 753; Sabin 2641 (giving second ed. only); Shoemaker 4517.   Marbled paper wrappers, lightly worn overall. Title-page with two small pencilled annotations, pages age-toned. Frankly, riveting.  (40077)

“Gaudentio,” under persecution by the Inquisition, reveals his fantastic voyages and travels through Egypt and an imaginary African land. While constantly assuring the stern inquisitors of his staunch adherence to Catholicism, he gives elaborate, admiring descriptions of the government, religion, and customs of his African utopia, particularly its training and education of women.

Provenance:  Pastedown with contemporary bookplate of James Butler.

•  Evans 35183; ESTC W10142. Not in Parsons; not in Finotti; not in Bowe, List of Additions and Corrections . . . to Parsons.   Contemporary sheep, missing pieces of leather from front cover and top and bottom of spine; spine with nice old red leather gilt label and front cover reattached using Japanese long-fiber method. Silverfish or roach damages to front free endpaper, fly-leaf, and title-page (costing small, small portion of two letters); damage also to lower outer corners of early leaves and upper inner area of leaves to p. 10 of preface with none of this impairing the reader. Age-toned, some foxing, occasional brown spots; an “old book” of the classic sort.  (37157)

•  Evans 36946; ESTC W10143; Minick, Maryland, 560. Not in Parsons; not in Finotti; not in Bowe, List of Additions and Corrections . . . to Parsons.   Publisher's sheep with modest gilt ruling on spine; spine label gone, front free endpaper loose. A few leaves starting to extrude; occasional spotting, but overall strong and good+ to very good.  (37183)

From the preface: “This fifth edition of the Lonkundo Hymn Book is a result of the joint labor of the missionaries and the native Christians.” One of those missionaries was “Alice Ferren Hensey, 1907–31, a talented musician and poet . . . [she] translated many hymns and songs, and taught them to new Congo Christians” (Smith). This is a mission press production and was actually printed in Bolenge.

•  On the Disciples of Christ Congo Mission, see: Fifty Years in Congo by Herbert Smith.  Publisher's green cloth-covered light boards, spine sun-faded. Some dust-soiling and dog-earing, but withal, a nice copy.  (40440)

In 1886 Andrew Duncan, a surgeon of the Bengal Army, received the Prize for this extended study of military, preventive, and tropical medicine with a focus on scurvy, typhus, cholera, yellow fever, dengue fever, smallpox, venereal disease, and malaria.

Binding:  Prize binding of the Army Medical School (housed in the Royal Victoria Hospital). Contemporary tan calf with black leather gilt label, round spine, raised bands, gilt and blind tooling on spine; modest gilt rolls and fillets to form border at perimeter of boards. Gilt supra libros on front board. Gilt-rolled turn-ins. Marbled endpapers and marbled edges.

Provenance:  Presentation leaf noting gift of this copy as a prize to A.E.H. Prince (of the Indian Medical Service) in the Department of Hygiene at the Army Medical School, Netley, signed by Col. J. Lane Notter, Professor of Military Hygiene, and dated 1896. Most recently in the residue of the stock of the F. Thomas Heller bookselling firm (est. ca. 1928).

Searches of NUC and WorldCat locate only five U.S. libraries (NIC, NNNAM, PPCP, PPiU-M, PCarlMH) reporting ownership.

•  Binding as above; front joint (outside) rubbed and starting in lower inch, small area at top of spine pulled with small loss of leather. Else a very nice copy; clean, sound, and withnotable provenance.  (39794)

•  Publisher's printed paper wrappers, in original printed dust wrapper; dust wrapper partially split along front outer fold and nicked at corners. Pages age-toned.  (28931)

16 steel-engraved maps

While the title-page gives the Boston publication line described above, the printed front cover gives Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait, & Co., 1838; this is a later edition, following the first of 1832.

A first impression is that “child” readers had, in 1832, much greater powers of attention to print than is now common, but indeed the history here is — the stories are — absorbing and evocative.

•  American Imprints 50587.   Publisher's quarter sheep and printed green paper–covered boards, rubbed and worn; pages cockled and foxed, yet paper good and untattered. One page with stray ink marks, not obstructing legibility. A good, solid, pleasing copy.  (33716)

      Some of both the voyages and the maps make their first published appearances here—among them the New England map depicting the Maryland and Virginia coastlines, engraved by R. Michault after one contained in Richard Blome’s Description of the Island of Jamaica, part of which work appears here translated into French. Altogether, a volume notable both for its strong African and North American content and for the aesthetic appeal of its plates and pleasingly ornamented typography.

Sabin 36944; Alden & Landis 674/159; Beinecke Lesser Antilles Collection 68; Baer, 17th-Century Maryland, 78. Recent 17th-century style mottled calf with covers framed in a gilt roll and double-panelled in gilt fillets with gilt-stamped corner fleurons,; spine with gilt-stamped leather title and author labels and gilt-stamped decorative devices. Several pages (not including title) and the versos of a few plates stamped by a now-defunct institution. Paper slightly embrittled. Light waterstaining to a number of leaves and plates, mostly in margins; the first map with two repairs. One leaf (blank?) prior to Colonies Angloises excised; lacking the folding map of the Nile. A good copy, in a handsome binding of recent vintage and contemporaneous style.  (8746)

The work is handsomely printed (although erratic in its pagination and signature markings), in double-column format, featuring title-pages in black and red with an engaging small engraved vignette of a ship between pillars reading “Plus” and “Ultra.”

Provenance:  Ownership stamp of Carlos Sanz in several places.

•  Sabin 40053; Palau 135738; Alden & Landis 737/135; Medina, BHA, 3071; Borba de Moraes, II, 150; LeClerc 872.   Contemporary vellum over pasteboards, a little soiled especially to spnes, retaining button and loop closures; hinges (inside) open in a few places but bindings strong. Occasional waterstain or other sign of exposure to dampness; a few gutter margins (only) of first volume with a short wormtrack; some cockling of paper.  (34810)

Although Mela's work is solely concerned with the world as known by Greeks and Romans, one should remember that their world did encompass portions of Africa and a knowledge of India. Additionally the appendix, originally written in 1521 and first appearing in the 1522 Basel printing of Mela, has a coda consisting of a 1515 letter of Vadian’s to Rudolph Agricola, the younger, that briefly discussesVespucci (X5v) and the New World (Y1r) when discussing the Spanish empire.

This is the third edition of Vadian's Mela, taken from the second edition (1522), but only the second with Vadian's appendix. Graesse comments, “Second éd. . . . fort changée et corrigée sur des mss.”

Whether all copies of the work were issued with a map has been long discussed and is without resolution: What we do know is that some have a map, most do not.

Provenance:  Macclesfield copy with the bookplate and handsome pressure-stamps.

Evidence of readership:  Scattered minor (usually one or two words) marginalia.

•  Harrisse, BAV, 157; Renouard, Paris, 2210; Alden & Landis 530/30; Sabin 63958 (not calling for a map); Graesse, V, 401 (not calling for a map).   18th-century quarter vellum with blue-green paper–covered sides, author's name in old ink to spine. Title-page lightly soiled, light discoloration or inkstains in some margins, light occasional foxing; pinhole-type worming in text of some pages with no loss of text, and a corner of last leaf torn away without loss of text; on pp. 170–96, a light waterstain across upper gutter not touching text and another across upper outer corners impinging on it. As usual, without the map found in only a few copies. Macclesfield pressure-stamps and marginalia as above. A good, sound, and soundly pleasing old folio.  (34114)

This primer is unrecorded in WorldCat and COPAC and all other online databases we have checked. It consists, as one would expect, of the alphabet, the phonemes, hyphenated simple words, and short texts. Mpongwe is a dialect of the Myene language spoken by a small group of Bantus living in Gabon. The booklet is printedon native paper using the Latin alphabet and diacritical marks. Again as one would expect, the type is worn.

•  Sewn, in original golden-tan wrappers; front cover lightly soiled and two small triangular tears without loss. Partially unopened, edges uncut. Very good.  (41075)

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)

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 42738; Library Company, Afro-Americana, 10602.   Removed from a nonce volume. Lightly pencilled librarian's notation on p. [1]. Leaves separated.  (18440)

•  Disbound; three holes in inner margin, not touching text. Ink notation and numeral on first page. Some dog-earing and tattering in corners and outer margins. Pencillings in several margins. Occasional mild spotting. Now housed in a simple archival phase box.  (13455)

The two folding tables are printed on very thin tissue or “tracing”-like paper. In addition to the grammar and the vocabularies there is alsoa printing of the parable of the prodigal son in Mpongwe with a literal translation into English done interlinearly.

Provenance:  Deaccessioned from the Bowdoin College library.

•  Publisher's marbled paper covered boards, brown leather shelfback, original title label on front board; light abrasions only, and some soiling to label. Browning to endpapers, some chipping and crinkling to edges and corners, intermittent spotting and soiling; ex-library with partially removed bookplate on front pastedown, embossed stamps on title-leaf and two others, no other markings.  (41081)

Mpongwe is a dialect of the Myene language spoken by a small group of Bantus living in Gabon. In addition to the grammar here, a second pagination is dedicated to “A vocabulary of the Mpongwe language, [compiled] by American missionaries at Gaboon [as it was spelled then], West Africa.” It has its own title-page and is sometimes found separately, although it was clearly issued with the grammar and is mentioned in gilt along with the Heads on the front cover of the binding here.