
AMERICANA
AFTER 1820
A-B Bibles C D-E F-G H I-K
L M
N-Pd Pe-Sa Sb-Sz T-V W-Z
[
]
NOT a “Collector's Copy” But
FUN to Have
in This
Early Form
Faulkner, William. Requiem for a nun. New York: Random House, [copyright 1951]. 8vo. [6], 286 pp.
$40.00
First edition, second printing; top page edges stained gray as issued, M. McKnight Kauffer listed on front dust jacket flap.
Cloth with a few light spots, spine extremities faintly worn, dust jacket with slightly ragged edges and some spine fading. (2113)
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A De-Catholicized Archbishop?
[Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe]. Selections from the writings of Fenelon. With a memoir of his life. By a lady. Boston: Hilliard, Gray, and Wilkins, 1831. 8vo (18.4 cm; 7.25"). 304 pp.
$100.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Fénelon (1651–1715), a French theologian and archbishop, had a tense and complex relationship with the Church hierarchy because of his writings. His office in Cambray was one of the richest benefices in France, and upon his banishment from the court of Louis XIV for the publication of his Maxims of the Saints, he dedicated himself fully to his position, making himself “in all that he did the perfect churchman” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 253).
The “lady” was Eliza L. Cabot Follen (1787–1860), the Boston-born author, translator, and abolitionist. She used her own translation — “a free one; but sedulous care has been taken never to depart from the spirit of the author” (v) — and one of her concerns in selection is to de-Catholicize the archbishop, allowing his more universal appreciation — for, as she says, his “writings necessarily contain many things that could not be acceptable to Christians of all denominations [and have therefore] been uniformly omitted” (v).
Fénelon's appearance in Follen's selective epitome would surely have amused him, and it pleased the book-buying public: This is the work’s third edition.
Provenance: A note states that “this book belonged to Grandmother Dyer[:] Ann Eliza Morse”; Charles Dyer Norton has also signed an endpaper in ink.
American Imprints 7028. On Fénelon, see: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., X, 252–54. Mid-19th-century plain black calf with gilt spine compartments tooled in an interesting pattern, single gilt rule around covers, a little gilt on board edges, marbled endpapers and edges; some wear and abrasions but spine gilt still bright. Provenance markings as above, some leaves creased across and a little interior staining and spotting especially at rear.
A nice old book. (36673)
Fergusson's First Novel of the Southwest
Fergusson, Harvey. The blood of the conquerors. New York: Modern Age Books, Inc., 1937. 8vo. [4], 146, [4 (adv.)] pp.
$45.00
Early paperback edition of this “romantic tale of the Southwest,” originally published in 1926: the first novel from a New Mexico–born journalist, screenwriter, and novelist. About a young Mexican lawyer, his affair with a beautiful blonde society girl, and his issues with finances, race, and class, this 25-cent production was designed to be eye-catchingly attractive; in the series of “Red Seal Books,” its covers and dust jacket both bear a design of red pinnipeds rampant, repeated in six rows.
Publisher's black and red printed paper wrappers, in original similar dust wrapper; dust wrapper with chips and short tears to margins (longer closed tear from upper front edge), spine slightly sunned. Front free endpaper with contemporary inked ownership inscription. Two leaves with short tear from lower margin, touching text without loss. Pages age-toned, embrittled as expectable; in fact, a nice copy, and with a “Three Seal Book Mark” laid in. (28422)

Opposing Satan's Servants with
a Lot of Slogging
Fernald, Mark. Life of Elder Mark Fernald, written by himself. Newburyport: Geo. Moore Payne & D.B. Pike; Philadelphia: Christian General Book Concern (pr. by William H. Huse), 1852. 12mo (19.6 cm, 7.7"). Frontis., 405, [1] pp.
$150.00
Click the images for enlargements.
First edition: Composed in diary-like fashion by a Free Will Baptist (1784–1851) who proselytized throughout New England, this autobiography largely focuses on where, when, and how Fernald's preaching was conducted. The determined, hardworking author was particularly opposed to drinking and dancing, and returns frequently to those subjects.
The work opens with an introduction from the publishers, who dedicated the Life to the members of the First Christian Church and Society of Kittery, ME.
The frontispiece portrait of Fernald was engraved by John Sartain, after a daguerrotype.
Binding: Publisher's textured black cloth, covers framed in blind rules and with foliate designs surrounding central gilt-stamped floral motifs on both boards. Spine gilt extra, all edges gilt.
Bound as above; spine extremities and corners rubbed, cloth showing small split starting at foot of front joint (hinge holding). Mild foxing to margins of frontispiece, with offsetting to title-page from guard leaf; two pages with small section of offsetting from now-absent laid-in item; pages otherwise clean.
A solid, worthwhile copy with its gilt shining bright and crisp. (38618)

An Early Victory for
Equal Protection & Civil Rights:
Rejecting Anti-Chinese Legislation
Field, Stephen J. The invalidity of the “Queue Ordinance” of the city and county of San Francisco. Opinion of the Circuit Court of the United States, for the district of California, in Ho Ah Kow vs. Matthew Nunan, delivered July 7th, 1879. San Francisco: J.L. Rice & Co., 1879. 8vo (23.3 cm, 9.2"). 43, [1] pp.
$2800.00
Click the images for enlargements.
First edition: The case in which U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Johnson Field (acting as an individual jurist in district court) found that shaving male prisoners' heads, a punitive practice used particularly to discourage queue-wearing Chinese immigrants from serving jail time rather than paying fines for violating the 1870 Sanitary Ordinance, was
unconstitutional.
Following the opinion is an appendix providing “history of the legislation of the Supervisors of the city and county of San Francisco against the Chinese . . . compiled by one of the counsel in the above case [i.e., B.S. Brooks] from the records of the Supervisors and the newspapers of the city.” The text was printed from a revised copy, according to the title-page.
Publisher's printed paper wrappers; corners and edges chipped, paper lost over spine, front wrapper with short tear from outer edge (not touching text), back wrapper with outer edge shortened. The whole now housed in a quarter navy morocco clamshell case with deep blue cloth–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title, gilt-ruled raised bands, and gilt-stamped compartment decorations. Pages slightly age-toned.
A landmark document of American Constitutional law. (34196)

SIGNED by the Author — Gerald Ford
Ford, Gerald. A time to heal: the autobiography of Gerald R. Ford. Norwalk, Conn.: Easton Press, ©1987. 8vo. [8], 454 pp.
$495.00
Click the images for enlargements.
This copy is SIGNED by President Gerald Ford. From Easton Press's “Library of the Presidents” series, this offering includes the introductory pamphlet by Henry Kissinger.
Stepping into the presidency amidst scandal, war, and a poor economy, Gerald Ford was presented with some very difficult leadership challenges. On the one hand, he was the right man at the right time: His honesty and reassurance restored the confidence in the presidency that been lost during the Watergate scandal, and his negotiation of the Helsinki Agreement contributed to the end of the Cold War. However, Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon eroded much of the trust he had built early in his term. This fateful decision, together with the fall of Saigon and his inability to “whip inflation,” were the main factors that cost him reelection. This memoir speaks to his role in navigating the challenges of his time with the same honesty and straightforwardness that characterized his tenure as president.
Full red leather, covers lavishly gilt-stamped with a pattern of elephants, spine with raised bands, gilt title, author's name, and gilt elephants within “compartments.” Endpapers bear a version of the image of the obverse side of the Great Seal of the United States. Silk ribbon placemarker. All edges gilt. Fine condition. (23605)

“May Not a POET Now & Then / Reveal These Lives of Average Men?”
Foss, Sam Walter. Whiffs from wild meadows. Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., copyright 1895. 8vo (19.4 cm, 7.7"). Frontis., [2], ix, [1], 272 pp.; illus.
$50.00
Click the images for enlargements.
First edition: Humorous verse, often in assorted American dialects, with small in-text illustrations by various hands.
Binding: Publisher's green cloth, front cover and spine stamped in black, gilt, and yellow, with a frame of apples and greenery surrounding a decorative title and small gilt motifs.
Binding as above, corners and spine extremities very slightly rubbed, dust jacket lacking. Endpapers and a few pages sprinkled with spots of faint staining, pages generally clean
A popular and entertaining author, in an attractive and well-preserved binding. (35257)

Recipes by WWII POWs Who Dreamed of These Foods
Foods from a Striking Array of Ethnic Backgrounds
Fowler, Halstead Clotworthy, comp.; Dorothy Wagner, ed. Recipes out of Bilibid. New York: George W. Stewart, 1946. 8vo (21 cm, 8.27"). x, [2], 81, [4] pp.
[SOLD]
Click the images for enlargements.
First edition: “The American soldiers imprisoned and hungry for three years in notorious Bilibid turned their conversation irresistibly to the food they had once relished and were determined to enjoy again . . . Colonel Halstead C. Fowler collected their most cherished recipes.” One section consists of Chinese dishes, taught to an American officer by a Chinese mestizo chef; other recipes are Filipino, French, British, Italian, Javanese, Mexican, Polish, and American. Wherever contributors' names are known, brief biographies are supplied, and a number of military anecdotes are also included.
Not in Brown, Culinary Americana. Publisher's red cloth, in original dust jacket; dust jacket showing small signs of onetime dampness, price-clipped and taped (some time ago) into Mylar wrapper, with spine sunned and extremities worn, volume extremities slightly rubbed. Front free endpaper with small annotation darkly inked out; back pastedown with bookseller's small ticket. Pages gently and evenly age-toned with scattered small checkmarks by some recipes, otherwise clean.
A solid copy of an interesting, even touching collection. (41353)

ALL the ACTUAL PRINTER'S BLOCKS for the *47* Illustrations
of Zoeth Skinner Eldredge's
The Beginnings of San Francisco
Francis, Walter, illus., et al. For Eldredge's The beginnings of San Francisco, the 47 California-themed printing blocks used to produce the volume’s illustrations. San Francisco: Pr. John C. Rankin Company (New York), 1912. 37 half-tone plates (on copper), 10 zinc cuts, all on their wood blocks; plus 3 additional plates on copper and another zinc cut, similarly mounted.
$2500.00
Click the images for enlargements.
A FULL SET of the printer's blocks prepared of the illustrations for Zoeth Skinner Eldredge's The Beginnings of San Francisco (1912), being 37 photographic half-tones on copper and 10 zinc cuts, all on wood blocks, ranging generally in size from approximately 2.5" square to 14" square, with oblong maps measuring up to 20" across. A number of the half-tones were done after drawings by Walter Francis, a California artist and illustrator who worked for the San Francisco Chronicle; a few blocks offer images of photographs, some identified as taken by W.C. Mendenhall of the U.S. Geological Survey or Captain D.D. Gaillard of the Boundary Commission; other images are said to be from paintings and a daguerrotype held privately, with another being the facsimile of a document in the John Carter Brown Library; and, indeed, some are simply “after” images in other books (e.g., The Annals of San Francisco and “Bartlett's Narrative”). The images include a dozen California maps and plans; photographic views of the Colorado Desert and an artistic sketch of “the Trail on the Gila”; portraits of prominent early Californians; several “military moments” and a plan of the Presidio in 1820; plus, notably, scenic and historic “views” including renderings of “the Palo Alto,” the ports of Monterey and San Diego, Yerba Buena, and a number of street and bay scenes depicting San Francisco proper.
Eldredge was a New York–born banker and amateur historian of California whose Beginnings of San Francisco, though possibly self-published, is listed in Cowan & Cowan and described there as “of great historical value.”
In addition to the 47 images/blocks from that work present here, we offer four others that seem to be “related” but which we have not identified beyond establishing that they do not seem to be from the same author's History of California (1915). We must wonder, were they images prepared for the Beginnings and not used? The additional zinc-cut image of a document signed by Gaspar de Portola and two of the three additional half-tones on copper (Portola sighting San Francisco bay and the Spaniards marching to Monterey) were found as online images without clear attribution as to their physical sources; and the last, a western scene not identified, has not yet been “matched” at all.
Most blocks from the Beginnings are still in or with
wrappers showing the images printed from them, as would have been convenient for the printers — these marked (as the backs of the blocks themselves sometimes are) identifying the images and/or showing that the work was completed. (The additional blocks are unwrapped and unmarked.)
In sum, this
complete array of the blocks used for printing a substantial and well-regarded Titanic-era book looks like something that was put on a printing house shelf one afternoon in 1912 at the end of an ordinary project for the pressmen and simply stayed there.
Seeing it on its present PRB&M shelf, coherent and unmessed-with more than 100 years later, is like walking up to that shelf through one of time's “wrinkles.”
On the Beginnings, see: Cowan & Cowan, Bibliography of the History of California, 193. For a list of all its images and notes on their origins, see: http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hbbegidx.htm. The paper wrappers present are variously just fine or age-toned or browned, chipped, torn along folds.
ALL the blocks are in good condition; this is not a sort of thing easily damaged! (29741)

A Pennsylvania COLLEGE Charter — Partly, a
GERMAN AMERICANUM
Franklin College, Lancaster, Pa. Charter of Franklin College, published by resolution of the Board, passed, 19 October, A.D. 1837. Lancaster: Bryson & Forney, 1837. 8vo. 7 pp.
$55.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Franklin College was ancestor to today's Franklin & Marshall College and its Charter suggests much of its flavor while confirming something often forgotten about the current institution's background: This opens with recitation of, “An act to incorporate and endow
the German College and Charity School, in the Borough and County of Lancaster, in this State.”
The College's founding trustees are a Who's Who of Pennsylvanians, both English and German; future trustees are to be chosen half from Lutherans and the other half from the Reformed or “Calvinist Church”; youth are to be instructed in the “German, English, Latin, Greek, and other learned languages” (note order); one-sixth of the endowment is to be used to support an adjunct children's charity school; etc.
An interesting 19th-century ethnic-educational ephemerum, apparently not in NUC Pre-1956.
Sewn; in original yellow wrappers. Very good. (9724)

Fremont's Third Expedition
Frémont, John Charles. Geographical memoir upon upper
California, in illustration of his map of Oregon and California. Washington: Printed by Tippin & Streeper, 1849. 8vo (23.5 cm; 9.25"). 40 pp.
$165.00
Click the image to the right for an enlargement.
John Charles Frémont (1813–90) was born in Savanannah, Georgia, a strong and activist opponent of slavery, a born explorer, and strong-headed and -willed. His service in California during the Mexican War, for the Union during the Civil War, etc., in many ways shows why he was tapped to be a presidential candidate; but it was certainly his role as an explorer that captured the imagination and the hearts of many Americans.
Here Frémont presents to the U.S. Senate his formal report on his third expedition to the West. The map referred to in the title was
issued separately under title “Map of Oregon and Upper California. . . 1848" and is not present; hence the affordable price here.
The original edition, not a reprint. A government publication: [U.S.] 30th Cong., 2d sess. House. Misc. [doc.] 5.
Sabin 25837; Howes F366; Wagner-Camp-Becker, Plains and Rockies, 150:2. Recent marbled paper–covered boards with leather label on front cover. Occasional light foxing. (24883)

Plenty of Stories in
Plenty of Places
Frewen, Moreton. Melton Mowbray and other memories. London: Herbert Jenkins Limited, 1924. 8vo (21.6 cm; 8.5"). viii, [4], 311 pp., [16] plts.
$240.00
Click the images for enlargements.
A very opinionated autobiography recounting Frewen's numerous adventures throughout England, the United States, Egypt, the Balkans, and India, from his childhood as part of the English gentry to tales of bison used as snow plows in the Wyoming Territory.
Howes notes ten chapters are dedicated to Frewen's “disastrous cattle enterprise on Powder river.”While suffering from financial difficulties throughout his life, Frewen continually worked with influential people, many of whom are here discussed in detail, including his wife Clara Jerome, aunt of Winston Churchill.
One way and another there is plenty of huntin', shootin', and fishin'; and there are plenty of politics.
Provenance: A tantalizing “Wealdside 1924” in ink on the front pastedown. The Weald is of course of huge extent, and there are therefore potentially a number of possible “Wealdsides”; but it is notable that the Frewen family dates back to Elizabethan times in East Sussex — and, perhaps, that Moreton Frewen died in 1924.
Howes F380; Graff 1442. Light green publisher's cloth, cover ruled and lettered in black, spine and back also stamped in black; gently rubbed and text slightly cocked, with a thumbnail-sized pink stain along the edge of the back cover and speckling the bottom edge. Light age-toning with offsetting to fly-leaves; inscription as noted.
A good read in a good solid copy. (37037)
“Exotic Dishes” from
Foreign Lands
Frost, Heloise. A world of good eating. A collection of old and new recipes from many lands. [Newton, MA?]: Phillips Publishers, Inc., © 1951. 8vo. 128 pp.; illus.
$40.00
Click image for enlargement.
Recipes from around the world, “tested in the kitchen of a New England housewife and published for the enjoyment of many American families.” This cookbook was illustrated by Ellen A. Nelson, who also contributed the Scandinavian recipes; each section opens with a full-page, color-printed image of children in various national costumes, and small illustrations both in color and black-and-white are scattered throughout. The volume closes with a section of regional American cookery including Ozark Pudding, Southern Pecan Pie, Creole Calas, Texas Gumbo, Alaskan Nuggets (a sort of salmon croquette), Salt Cod Dinner, and California Orange Bread.
This is an
uncommonly nice copy, still housed in its original publisher's box, which features the front cover image reproduced in color.
Not in Brown, Culinary Americana. Publisher's spiral-bound wrappers, front wrapper color-printed with image of Dutch girls baking, in publisher's box (as above); one edge of box rubbed and corners of box bottom reinforced. Front fly-leaf with inked gift inscription and pencilled date (March 24, 1956). A clean, fresh, virtually unworn copy — and very uncommon as such. (29584)

CORNERSTONE for an
AMERICAN SPORTING LIBRARY
“Gentleman of Philadelphia County, A” [i.e., Jesse Y. Kester]. The American shooter's manual, comprising such plain and simple rules, as are necessary to introduce the inexperienced into a full knowledge of all that relates to the dog, and the correct use of a gun; also a description of the game of this country. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey, 1827. 12mo (18.5 cm; 7.125"). [2] ff., pp. [ix]–249, [1] p., [1 (errata)] f., [3 (ads)] ff.; frontis., 2 plts.
$1800.00
Click the images for enlargements.
The first American illustrated sporting book and the first American sporting book written by an American. Only one sporting book published in America preceded it: The Sportsman's Companion (NY,1783; later editions Burlington [NJ], 1791, and Philadelphia, 1793), “by a gentleman, who has made shooting his favorite amusement upwards of twenty-six years, in Great-Britain, Ireland, and North-America.”
Kester deals almost exclusively with game birds and waterfowl native to the Delaware Valley that surrounds Philadelphia: wild turkeys, partridge, snipe, quail, grouse, and ducks. With regard to rifles and guns he addresses cleaning, powder, wadding, etc. And when writing about dogs, in addition to notes on training and conditioning them, he offers recipes for common ailments and gun-shot wounds.
The plates are signed “F. Kearny,” an artist born in Perth Amboy, NJ, who studied drawing with Archibald and Alexander Robertson and engraving with Peter Maverick. From 1810 to his death in 1833 he practiced engraving in Philadelphia.
There are two states of gathering “U”: this copy has the typographical error “tibbon” with the stop-press correction to “ribbon” on p. 235.
The volume ends with advertisements for several sporting and fishing goods suppliers.
Shoemaker 27838; Howes K108; Henderson, American Sporting Books, 6; Phillips, Sporting Books, 21; Streeter Sale 4084; Bennett, Practical Guide, 60–61. On Stauffer, American Engravers, I, 148–49. Publisher's sprinkled sheep with simple rope roll in blind on board edges, some abrasion to leather; round spine with gilt double rules forming “spine compartments,” black leather title label. The usual light and scattered foxing noted in all copies, nothing more.
A very nice copy. (28553)

The Prophet INSCRIBED
by This Much Admired Lebanese-American Poet,
Artist, & Mystical Writer
Gibran, Kahlil. The prophet. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926. Square small 8vo (25 cm, 8.25"). 84 pp., 12 plates; illus.
$10,000.00
Click the images for enlargements.
Gibran was born in Lebanon in 1883 and emigrated to the U.S. with his mother and siblings in 1895. His best-known work is The Prophet, a collection of philosophical, spiritual, mystical, and inspirational poetic essays that have been treasured by generations around the world since being first published in September, 1923. Its illustrations “are reproduced from the original drawings by the author.”
Inscribed copy: “With the kindest thoughts of Kahlil Gibran[,] 1926.”
Provenance: Christmas gift inscription reading, “For my friend Cecile from Barbara Young, Christmas, 1926.” Barbara Young was the pen name of Henrietta Breckenridge Boughton, an American art and literary critic in the 1920s and a poet; she served as Gibran's secretary from 1925 until his death, revised and published his book The Garden of the Prophet, and published a study of his life (This Man from Lebanon).
Publisher's black cloth; gilt faded, top of spine pulled with small loss. Corner of one leaf torn away. Else a very nice copy of
a book not often found inscribed, and with a provenance that goes straight back to the inscriber. (40911)

A Bishop of LIMA Feuds with the POPE
González Vigil, Francisco de Paula. Light in Darkness. a book for Catholics
and Protestants, letter to the Pope, and an analysis of the brief of the 10th of June, 1851. Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1852. 12mo. 44 pp.
$150.00
Click the images for enlargements.
González Vigil was the Roman Catholic of Lima, Peru, and in 1848–49 he published his six-volume Defensa de la autoridad de los gobiernos y de los obispos contra las pretensiones de la Curia romana (i.e., “Defense of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Authorities against the pretensions of the Roman Curia”) . The pope was not pleased by this challenge to his temporal power and in 1851 placed the book on the Index librorum prohibitorum.
In 1852 González Vigil responded to the pope with his Carta al Papa y análisis del Breve de 10 de junio de 1851, which is here in English translation from a Boston publisher.
A scarce American Catholicum.
Removed from a nonce volume; a little dusty and some dog-earing. (37963)

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.
[SOLD]
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)

Hand-Colored
Floral Frontispiece
Goodrich, Samuel G., ed. The token, or affection's gift,
a Christmas and New-Year's present. Hartford: S. Andrus & Son, [ca. 1846]. 12mo. Frontis., 312 pp.; 4 plts.
$112.50
Reprint of the 1838 “Token” gift book, with different plates and a hand-colored floral frontispiece offering pink roses. One of the four uncolored plates is of a “Young American in the Alps,” by Healey and engraved by Cushman; another and this cataloguer's favorite, “Sun Set on the Hudson,” is by Weir, engraved by J.A. Ralph.
Binding: Publisher's red cloth, covers and spine gilt-stamped with avian and foliate designs; all edges gilt.
Faxon 786. Spine and edges moderately rubbed with front hinge cracked; spots of staining to bottom part of front cover. Front free endpaper with good portion torn away, back free endpaper lacking; waterstaining in varying degrees to lower outer corners after p. 120 and some soiling. One signature extruded and others heading for that; one plate shaved very very close to image at top but image itself not quite touched! Not a fresh copy, still, an interesting one. (12944)

Poetry from Springfield, Massachusetts
& the “Mansion” Hotel at Pas'comuck
Greene, Aella. After night, a summer-place talk, with other poems. Boston: Lee & Shepard; New York: Lee, Shepard & Dillingham, 1873. 8vo. Frontis., 93, [1] pp.; 2 plts. (incl. in pagination).
$50.00
Click the images for enlargements.
First edition: Verses from a poet and journalist whose work was, in its day, considered to “most faithfully embody the genuine spirit of New England country life” (New England Homestead, 1881). Sickness is a theme here, along with the pain of it bravely borne; and the last piece expresses the hope that “all the allopaths” would vanish from the earth and that only “pleasant herbs” and “mild botanics” be given to the sick, rather than calomel and drugs.
The volume is illustrated with a total of three wood-engraved depictions of New England buildings.
Publisher's pebbled terra cotta cloth, front cover and spine with gilt-stamped title; spine darkened and worn with gilt rubbed, sides with small spots of discoloration, cover gilt nice and bright. Some light smudging to margins, pages otherwise clean. All edges gilt. (27649)

Near-Miniature Botany for
American Children
[Grout, Jonathan]. About plants. Worcester [MA]: Jonathan Grout, Jr. (pr. by Henry J. Howland), [ca. 1840]. 24mo (10.5 cm, 4.13"). [3]–24, [2] pp.; illus.
[SOLD]
Click the images for enlargements.
Illustrated botanical toybook for children, opening with a so-called “insect plant” alleged to be part wasp and part vegetable(!). The other plants described are apple of Sodom (a type of milkweed), dragon's blood tree, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, camphor, melon, pitcher plant, flax, and colombo [sic] — with
each of the eleven plants featuring its own wood-engraved vignette. The insect plant illustration is to be found on the back wrapper, while the title-page bears an additional vignette of an urn and foliage arrangement.
This is one of several variants printed by Grout, not all of which appear to have covered exactly the same plants. The set here differs from at least one other known issue of About Plants (described in WorldCat as comprising frankincense, camphor, cinnamon, cane, flax, fig tree, plantain, mandrake, lign aloe, and palm tree), although the present example does, as in the WorldCat description, have an alphabet following the title-page.
Provenance: From the children's book collection of American collector Albert A. Howard, sans indicia.
American Imprints 40-16. Not in Gumuchian, not in Opie, not in Osborne Collection. Sewn as issued, sewing loosening; front wrapper lacking, back wrapper with short tear from spine, corners rubbed. Pages age-toned and faintly foxed with a smudge or two only; free of markings or other signs of childish usage. (41159)
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