
AFRICA
[
]
“A Voyage to Abyssinia” — A GOOD, Lively, & Readable Account
(ABYSSINIA). Salt, Henry. A voyage to Abyssinia, and travels into the interior of that country, executed under the orders of the British government, in the years
1809 and 1810; in which are included, an account of the Portuguese settlements on the east coast of Africa .... Philadelphia: M. Carey; Boston: Wells & Lilly (pr. by Lydia R. Bailey), 1816. 8vo (23.5 cm, 9.25"). 24, 454 pp.; fold. map.,
illus.
$1250.00
First U.S. edition and printed by Lydia Bailey, following the London first of 1814. Salt, a British traveller and Egyptologist, first visited Ethiopia in 1805, and returned in 1809 on a diplomatic mission intended to promote ties between the British government and the Emperor of Abyssinia. The Voyage gives Salt’s observations of Ethiopian customs, manners, dress, cuisine, and music, along with the factual details of his diplomatic achievements — or lack thereof, in terms of concrete agreements — followed by an appendix comparing vocabulary words from various languages spoken along “the Coast of Africa, from Mosambique to the borders of Egypt, with a few others spoken in the Interior of that Continent” (p. 395).
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)

Portugal's Colonial Economies & Commerce, Studied by a
Brazilian
Azeredo Coutinho, José Joaquim da Cunha de. Ensaio economico sobre o comercio de Portugal e suas colonias. Offerecido ao serenissimo principe da Beira, o senhor D. Pedro, e publicado de ordem da Academia Real das Sciencias pelo seu socio ... Lisboa: Na Typografia da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1816. 4to (21 cm, 8.25"). xxiii, [1], 8, 201, [1] pp., [2] ff.
[SOLD]
Click the images for enlargements.
Azeredo Coutinho (1742–1821) was born into a very well-to-do
sugar-growing and landowning family in the captaincy of Rio de Janeiro. His primary and secondary education was in Brazil. He spent his early adulthood learning about the mining industry in Minas Gerais and about his family's sugar business, which he inherited in 1768 at the age of 26. But his ambitions lay elsewhere, and in 1775 at the age of 33 he went to Portugal and enrolled in the recently revised canon law program at the Coimbra University.
In 1780 he graduated with a degree in canon law and continued in Portugal, being elected to the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1792. In 1798 he left Lisbon for Olinda, Pernambuco, where he served as the bishop (1794–1806). While there he founded a renowned seminary based on Enlightenment principles instilled in him at Coimbra.
As an Enlightenment figure and also still an owner of significant sugar-producing land, Azeredo Coutinho unsurprisingly was interested in the economic underpinning of Portugal and its colonies, especially Brazil; during his years in Portugal he wrote against legislation that would adversely effect the
sugar, salt, cacao, and other export crops of Brazil and other colonies. His detailed analysis, the Ensaio economico sobre o comercio de Portugal e suas colonias, appeared in 1794 and is now a rare book. In it he lays out the facts about the Brazilian export economy and combats
Montesquieu's silly, but nonetheless celebrated and universally received, theory of climates.
This “segunda edição, corrigida, e accrescentada pelo mesmo auctor” was revised in Portugal where Azeredo Coutinho was living following his recall in 1802. The text has some corrections and whole paragraphs and areas have been rewritten, or expanded with new information or arguments. Even the footnotes, where Azeredo Coutinho has set forth considerable personal observations on all aspects of life and people in Brazil, are expanded.
It must be emphasized that while much of the volume addresses Brazil, the Portuguese colonies in Asia and Africa are also studied.
Provenance: Late 19th- or early 20th-century bookplate of the Visconde de Moreita de Rey.
Goldsmiths'-Kress 21406.8; Inocencio, IV, 384/6; Borba de Moraes, Bibliographia brasiliana, I, 23; Archivo biográfico de España, Portugal e Iberoamérica, fiche 242, 428–34; Sabin 17949 (for first edition; the second not listed). Burns, “The Role of Azeredo Coutinho in the Enlightenment of Brazil,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, 44. 2 (May, 1964), pp. 145–60. Contemporary mottled sheep (“pasta espanola”), gilt spine with red leather gilt label, plain boards; some worming, this reaching in to some areas of front free endpaper but not text.
A sound, clean, nice copy. (40065)

Resettling Free Black Americans: Creating (& Proselytizing to) an African Colony
Bacon, E[phraim], & J. B. Cates. Abstract of a journal of E. Bacon, assistant agent of the United States, to Africa: With an appendix, containing extracts from proceedings of the Church Missionary Society in England, for the years 1819–20. To which is prefixed an abstract of the journal, of the Rev. J.B. Cates, one of the missionaries from Sierra Leone to Grand Bassa; in an overland journey, performed in company with several natives, in the months of February, March, and April, 1819. The whole showing the successful exertions of the British and American governments, in repressing the slave trade. Philadelphia: S. Potter (pr. by D. Dickinson), 1821. 8vo (21 cm, 8.25"). 96 pp.
$650.00
Click the images for enlargements.
First edition of this gathering of items related to efforts to end the slave trade, resettle freed slaves, and promote Christianity among the freedmen. Bacon was one of the earliest formally appointed Episcopal missionaries to Liberia; while in the country in 1821, he negotiated for the use of land for resettlement in the Bassa Colony. He was dispatched to Sierra Leone following the death of his brother, the Rev. Samuel Bacon, who had been trying to establish a colony that failed with many deaths on Sherbro Island, and the main account here describes his efforts to relocate the Sherbro survivors along with a new group of emigrants.
Appended to Bacon's journal are “An Extract from the Royal Gazette, Published at Freetown, Sierra Leone, Saturday, April 21st, 1821" (an update on the state of American colonization on the coast of Africa), “An Abstract of Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society for West Africa, Published in London, 1819–20" (giving names, descriptions, and faculty of schools and churches), and the Cates excerpts mentioned in the title (the author being an English missionary to Sierra Leone), as well as additional items from the Royal Gazette, “Accounts from the English Colony in South Africa,” details on laws enacted to suppress the slave trade, and
an account of the sinking of the slave ship Carlota. The collection went through a second edition in the year following this initial publication.
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)

An AFRICAN Utopia, as
Described to the INQUISITION
[Berington, Simon]. The adventures of Signor Gaudencio di Lucca. Being the substance of his examination before the fathers of the Inquisition at Bologna, in Italy: Giving an account of an unknown country in the midst of the deserts of Africa, the origin and antiquity of the people, their religion, customs, and laws. Copied from the original manuscript in St. Mark’s Library, at Venice. With critical notes by the learned Signor Rhedi. To which is prefixed, a letter of the secretary of the Inquisition, shewing the reasons of
Signor Gaudentio's being apprehended, and the manner of it. Translated from the Italian. Philadelphia: Re-printed by William Conover, 1799. 12mo (18 cm; 7.125"). 320 pp.
$400.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Originally published in 1737 under the title Memoirs of Signor Gaudentio di Lucca, this work was “[o]ften and erroneously ascribed to Bishop Berkeley” (Halkett & Laing, 2nd ed.); it is now generally attributed to Berington, a Catholic priest.
“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)
PLEASE NOTE ALSO
THE NEXT ITEM:

The Inquisition An African Utopia Educating Women
[Berington, Simon]. The adventures of Signor Gaudentio di Lucca. Being the substance of his examination before the fathers of the Inquisition, at Bologna, in Italy. Giving an account of an unknown country in the midst of the desarts [sic] of Africa. Copied from the original manuscript in St. Mark’s Library, at Venice. With critical notes by the learned Signor Rhedi. Baltimore: Pr. by Bonsal & Niles, 1800. 16mo (17 cm; 6.5"). xxi, [2], 24–234 pp.
$350.00
Click the images for enlargements.
This is the last edition of the 18th century, Baltimore issue: Bonsal and Niles printed two issues, differing only in the name of the city of publication —Wilmington or Baltimore.
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)

Congo Mission Press Hymnal — LOKUNDO
Disciples of Christ Congo Mission. Bonkanda wa nsao ya Nzakomba. Bolenge, Congo Belge: Disciples of Christ Congo Mission, 1918. 12mo (28 cm; 7.125"). 231 hymns.
$275.00
Click the images for enlargements.
The fifth edition of the Disciples of Christ Congo Mission's Lonkundo Hymn Book. The Disciples of Christ Congo Mission (DCCM) arrived in the Congo in 1889 with the intention of developing an indigenous church that would provide change to the whole Congo social order. After developing a written form of the local language, Lonkundo, the DCCM began publishing hymnbooks and educational pamphlets, although Eva Nichols Dye, an early DCCM missionary, would later lament the inaccuracy of their understanding of the language.
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, 190731, 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)

The 1886 Winner of the
Parkes Memorial Prize
Duncan, Andrew. The prevention of disease in tropical and sub-tropical campaigns. London: J. & A. Churchill, 1888. 8vo (22 cm, 8.5"). x, 396 pp.
$850.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Beginning circa 1871 the British War Office awarded the Parkes Memorial Prize, consisting of 75 guineas and a gold medal: It was awarded every third year to the writer of the best essay on a subject connected with hygiene. The competition was open to the
medical officers of the Army, Navy, and Indian Services of executive rank on full pay, with the exception of the assistant professors of the Army Medical School during their term of office.
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 with
notable provenance. (39794)

A Tour of French Colonial Africa
Gide, André. Travels in the Congo. New York: Modern Age Books, Inc., 1937. 12mo. [12], 305, [4] pp.
$30.00
Click the image for an enlargement.
“Red Seal” paperback edition of this classic travelogue, translated from the original French by Dorothy Bussy.
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)

Around the World with
Maps & Costumes
Goodrich, Samuel G. The second book of history, including the modern history of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Boston: Charles J. Hendee & G.W. Palmer and Co., 1838. 4to (19 cm, 7.5"). Frontis., 180 pp.; 16 maps.
$75.00
Click the images for enlargements.
From the author of Peter Parley's Tales: a children's history reader aimed at pupils who had come a bit further along from that first book. The accounts here of the development of Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Russia, China, etc., and the countries' foreign relations, are illustrated with
in-text wood engravings including depictions of Portuguese, Norwegian, Russian, “Algerine,” “Otaheitan,” and other national costumes; also included in the volume are
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)
From
New
England to the
NILE
[Justel, Henri, ed.] Recueil de divers voyages faits en Afrique et en l’Amerique,
qui n’ont point esté encore publiez.... Paris: Louis Billaine, 1674.
4to (23.7 cm, 9.4"). á4ã4A–Z4Aa–Hh4
Ii2Kk4Ll21§–4§45§2
**A–**C4 a2b–g4 *A–*K4L2;
[8] ff., 262, 35, [1 (blank)] 23, [1 (blank)], 49, [1 (blank)] pp., [1] f., 81,
[1 (blank)] pp., 3 fold. plans, 4 maps (3 fold.), 9 plts.
$6500.00
Click the images for enlargements.
First edition of this collection of significant and interesting voyages, edited by
a scholar and book collector who served in the employ of Louis XIV before being
appointed Keeper of the King’s Library at St. James by Charles II. The
compilation includes French-language travelogues of Barbados, the Nile River,
Ethiopia, “l’Empire du Prète-Jean,” Guiana, Jamaica,
and the English colonies, with illustrations including banana and palmetto trees,
Caribbean pottery, and maps of New England, Jamaica (including Florida and the
Antilles), and Barbados.
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)

Only Our Fourth Copy, EVER!
Laet, Joannes de. Hispania, sive De regis hispaniae regnis et opibus commentarius. Lugd. Batav.: Ex officina Elzeviriana, 1629. 16mo (11 cm, 4.375"). 520 pp., [4] ff. (final blank leaf).
$875.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Second edition, as
expanded to include material on the Canary Islands; issued the same year as the first. Significant as an
Americanum, this has chapters or sections on Florida, New Spain, Chile, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Sinaloa, Culuacan, Puerto Rico, Veragua, the Yucatan, the Rio de la Plata, Zacatecas, Jalisco, and Brazil. Also there is information on Africa, including the Congo and Angola, and on Asia, principally Ceylon, Madagascar, and the Moluccas.The author was the cosmographer and historiographer of the Dutch East India Company as well as the Dutch royal family's official translator.
This is one of the scarcest volumes in commerce of the Elzevirs' series of histories in the Respublica series. It is only the fourth copy we have had in our 30+ years in the antiquarian book business.
Provenance: Faded 17th-century inscription on title-page indicating the volume was a gift of P. Dupre to a school whose name we do not decipher.
Willems 313; Rahir 284; European Americana 629/79; Palau 129562; Sabin 38560; Borba de Moraes (2nd ed.),
Bibliographia brasiliana, I, 450. Contemporary Dutch vellum over paste boards, all edges red with that dye sometimes spilling into margins.
A clean, very good copy of this nice little book. (33584)

FIRST BIBLIOGRAPHY of
AMERICANA (+)
León Pinelo, Antonio de. Epítome de la bibliotheca oriental, y occidental, nautica, y geográfica ... Añadido y enmendado nuevamente en que se contienen los escritores de las Indias orientales, y occidentales, y reinos convecinos China, Tartaria, Japón, Persia, Armenia,
Etiopia y otras partes. Madrid: En la oficina de Francisco Martinez Abad, 1737–38. Folio (30 cm; 11.75"). 3 vols. I: [71], [135], [27] ff. II: [221] ff. III: 202 pp.
$9000.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Antonio de León Pinelo (1589–1660) was a Spanish-colonial historian. Born in Cordova de Tucuman and educated at the Jesuit college of Lima, he left the New World for Spain in 1612 and there enjoyed a highly successful career, becoming attorney of the Council of the Indies and later a judge in the Casa de Contratacion in Seville.
His Epitome was originally published in Madrid in 1629 and is here in the second edition as
enlarged and annotated by Andres Gonzalez de Barcia: It was the first bibliography for the field of Americana and to this day
it remains an important source for scholars and collectors of the colonial era of the New World for its wealth of bibliographic data and most especially information about manuscripts.
Rich says of this edition that it is, “The most complete general bibliography of geographical works, travels, missionary reports, etc.” And LeClerc echoes him: “ouvrage extremement important pour la bibliographie americaine.”
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)

Curiosities & Wonders — European, African, *&* American
[Mascarenhas, José Freire de Monterroyo, comp., ed., trans.]. Prodigiosas appariçoens & successos espantosos vistos no presente anno de 1716. E nos fins do passado em varias partes do mundo. Lisboa: Na officina de Pascoal da Sylva, impressor de Sua Majestade, 1716. Small 8vo (20 cm,7.75"). 12 pp.
[SOLD]
Click the images for enlargements.
Mascarenha (1670-1760), a prolific writer on a plethora of topics, here compiles, edits, and when necessary, translates accounts of curiosities and wonders from America, Africa, and Europe found in various newspaper items and letters. The account from America recounts a curious rain storm near New Castle, Delaware.
Provenance: From 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 reporting ownership.
Silva, Diccionário bibligrafico portugueza, 4:346. Self-wrappers. Very good. (39722)

A Good BAV Title — Macclesfield Provenance
Mela, Pomponius. Pomponii Melae De orbis situ libri tres, accuratissime eme[n]dati. Lutetiae Parisiorum: [Chrétien Wechel], 1530. Folio (34 cm; 13.25"). [14] ff., 196 p., [1] f., [28] ff. (without the fold. map, if one was actually issued with it).
$1450.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Mela's work De orbis situ libri tres (a.k.a., De chorographia) is, of course, a standard and famous work of ancient geography and, dating from the first century A.D., is the oldest surviving geographical text written in Latin. It enjoyed readership for centuries in manuscript and was first printed in 1471 with eight subsequent incunable editions, while in the 16th century to 1530 there was virtually a new edition every other year: Clearly, it was
a book of interest and importance for the Renaissance.
It is a short work; the Petit printing of it in 1513, for example, occupies only 60 pages. In this edition, however, Mela's text (printed in roman) is surrounded by
extensive commentary in italic by Joachim Vadianus (1484–1551), thus extending the whole to 196 pages. The volume ends with an appendix, “Loca aliquot ex Vadiani commentarijs summatim repetita, & obiter explicata,” consisting of Vadian's study of Mela's work and attempting to address inconsistencies and problems in it.
Printer Wechel has arrayed the commentary around the text here with
notable attractiveness, he has supplied quite a number and variety of attractive initials, and both his main title-page and the sectional one for the “Loca aliquot” are dramatically presented with the same
elaborate multipart woodcut title border.
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 discusses
Vespucci (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 callin 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)

WORLD MYTHOLOGY — 8 Vols. & Thousands of Entries
Pozzoli, Giovanni; Felice Romani; Antonio Peracchi, et al. Dizionario storico-mitologico di tutti i popoli del mondo. Livorno: Stamperia Vignozzi, 1824–28. 8 vols. 8vo (21 cm, 8.25"). I: 580 pp. II: 581–1163, [1] pp. (pp. 1057–64 repeated in place of pp. 1065–72). III: [1165]–1708 pp. (pagination 1551–52 repeated, 1687–88 skipped). IV: [1709]–2342 pp. V: 2351–3086 pp. (pagination skips 2519–26). VI: 3087–3855 pp. (pagination skips 3407–08). VII: 576 pp. VIII: 577–1074 pp.
$2500.00
Click the middle and right hand-images for enlargements.
Second edition of this classic dictionary of comparative mythology,
a hefty collection of the deities, heroes, tales, festivals, antiquities, and
other folklore of numerous cultures and countries including Mexico, Peru, America,
Africa,
India, Japan, China, etc, along with Jewish, Greek, and Roman antiquities. The
foundation of the work was François Noel's Dictionnaire de la Fable;
copious additions and corrections were made by Pozzoli, Romani (the famed poet,
scholar, and librettist for La Scala), and Peracchi (another librettist). The
resulting encyclopedic endeavor was originally published from 1809–27
under the title Dizionario d'ogni mitologia e antichità incominciato,
according to Graesse and Brunet, who both give Pozzoli's first name as Girolamo.
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)
(Again??)
Back to Africa?!
United States. Congress. [drop-title] Report on colonizing the free people of colour of the United States. February 11, 1817. Read, and committed to a committee of the whole House on Monday next. [Washington: William A. Davis, 1817]. 8vo. 5 pp.
$200.00
Click the image for an enlargement.
An early document of the American Colonization Society, founded in December 1816. Concerns the feasibility of negotiating with Great Britain to establish a colony of free blacks in Sierra Leone. Government document: House document (United States. Congress. House); 14th Congress, 2nd session, no. 78. Printed at head of title: [78].
Shaw & Shoemaker 42738; Library Company, Afro-Americana, 10602. Removed from a nonce volume. Lightly pencilled librarian's notation on p. [1]. Leaves separated. (18440)
Search & Seizure
Van Buren, Martin (President, 18371841). [drop-title] Search or seizure of American vessels on coast of Africa, &c. Message from the President of the United States, transmitting a report from the Secretary of State, in relation to seizures or search of American vessels, &c. March 3, 1841. Read, and laid upon the table. [Washington, 1841]. 8vo. 766 pp.
$400.00
Click the image for an enlargement.
The ships were being stopped as part of England's attempts to end the slave trade. Correspondence between the Secretary of State and the Legation of the United States in London, the British Legation at Washington, and the United States Consulate at Havana. Correspondence dates from 12 February 1836 to 1 March 1841. Government document: 26th Congress, 2d Session. Doc. No. 115. Ho. of Reps. Executive.
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)
Click here for a database including 
not in PRB&M's
illustrated catalogues . . .
keywords,
e.g. = AFRICA, AFRIQUE . . .
All material © 2019
The Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company, LLC
 |
PRB&M/SessaBks |
 |
PLACE AN ORDER | E-MAIL US | GO (BACK) TO TOPIC/INTEREST TABLE