BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS

[ ]

Hague & Gill Bibliography — “Observing Eric Gill's Centenary”

Click the images for enlargement.

•  First edition: Compiled and with an introduction by James Davis. The text is illustrated with four versions of the printer's devices designed by Gill for Hague & Gill, plus “Pigotts Road.”

•  Publisher's plain paper wrappers. Clean and fresh.  (29721)

For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.

Handsome, Scholarly Edition ofDibdin’s Cambridge Notebook

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Well-constructed facsimile of Dibdin’s 1823 notebook with a detailed introduction by Renato Rabaiotti, excerpts from Dibdin’s Library Companion facing appropriate facsimiles, and a then-current finding-list of books, manuscripts, and prints examined by Dibdin in Cambridge libraries, as compiled by David McKitterick.

Mardersteig printed 250 copies of the text in Monotype Times 10/11 24 gr. on paper from Magnani of Pescia, Italy, with plentiful margins and more facsimiles on the endpapers.

Provenance:  From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  Quarter black calf and grey paper–covered boards, gilt lettering on spine, and black ribbon placemarker. Housed in a grey paper–covered slipcase with uneven fading from sun; slipcase otherwise as new, as the volume itself is. Worthy of any admirer of Dibdin or McKitterick.  (37907)

The Art of the Printed Book

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition: Essays on book design and printing by a famed typographer, book designer, and hand-printer. This is one of 325 copies (300 for sale) printed; the edition was designed by Carol J. Blinn at Warwick Press, printed by Daniel Keleher at Wild Carrot Letterpress, bound by Sarah Creighton and C.J. Blinn in quarter olive Niger goatskin and paste paper–covered sides (paper made by Blinn), andsigned at the colophon by the author.

•  Binding as above, inoriginal terra-cotta paper–covered slipcase; leather very gently sunned, slipcase with lower edge rubbed and each side with a small unobtrusive spot/mark or two to paper, otherwise clean. Informative and attractive. (30560)

“The Father of the post–World War II Private-Press Movement”

Click the images for enlargements.

•  From the book's rear cover, extensively: “Harry Duncan was a major Master Printer, from whom many younger workers learned enough that legions of poets can be forever grateful to have had their work presented so appropriately that the material particulars, text and all, will melt way, vanish into thin air, leaving the work — the POEM — imprinted in the reader's brain, as if an electronic chip had been implanted: as some crafty publisher might attempt some day, hoping to equal the impact of a Harry Duncan book.

“Harry Duncan was also a distinctive though not prolific poet and translator; a stylist as eloquent and elegant in prose as in speech and bearing; a fine italic penman; and husband of Nancy, whose genius, separate but equal, was of the theater, though still imprinted in the memories of fellow actors and audiences, especially children.

“The Inner Tympan brings together every published piece of Duncan's writing that could be found, and constitutes thus a self-portrait; not one consciously planned, certainly not one he helped to gather, but neither is it one he would have rejected.”

Duncan (1916–97) is “considered the father of the post-World War II private-press movement” (Ray Anello, “Reading the Fine Print,” Newsweek, August 16, 1982, p. 64). He operated the Cummington Press beginning in 1939 in Cummington, MA, later at Iowa City after becoming director in 1956 of the typographical laboratory at the University of Iowa's School of Journalism, and later still in 1972 in Omaha, NB, where he created the University of Nebraska's fine arts press, Abattoir Editions.

The first edition of The Inner Tympan was printed in 2005 in an edition of 30 copies by Juan Pascoe — Duncan's last apprentice, then and now a master hand-printer in Mexico — for his friends and those of Harry and Nancy Duncan, the Cummington Press, and the Taller Martín Pescador. This second edition “was set in Enrico, a digital version of the 12-point type cut and cast in 1600 by Enrico Martinez in Mexico City, and drawn by Gonzalo Garcia Barcha in the final years of the twentieth century” (colophon).

•  Publisher's illustrated hardcover binding. New. With a four-page pamphlet of “Some memories of the Cummington Press” by Gloria Goldsmith Gowdy, printed by Juan Pascoe in 100 copies “with HD's pressmark & PWW's drawing for The Winter Sea,” laid in.  (40713)

W.A.D. 1880 – 1980

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Eleven essays on the innovative typographer/artist/author, plus a letter from him to Alfred A. Knopf regarding colors for book cloth. Featuring numerous examples of Dwiggins's designs, lettering, and illustration work, this volume was privately printed for friends of Hermann Püterschein (“Püterschein” being Dwiggins's sarcastic, self-mocking alter ego).

The volume was designed by Vincent Torre; this isone of 500 copies printed.

•  Publisher's gray-green cloth, front cover with black-stamped vignette, spine with black-stamped title. Minimal wear to lower outer cover corners, otherwise a crisp, lovely copy.  (36864)

Overview ofCA Printing History, in Miniature — Satisfying CA Provenance

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Dedicated to the Thirtieth Annual Convention of the International Association of Printing House Craftsmen, this small-size keepsake was the first appearance of a work that would later be expanded and become Fahey's authoritative Early Printing in California: From Its Beginning in the Mexican Territory to Statehood. Fahey, a bookbinder and teacher of fine binding as well as a scholar of typography, helped set the text (Linotype Janson) alongside Ralph Scott, while Haywood Hunt designed the title-page and John C. Larsen did the presswork.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with small bookplate of Albert Sperisen (1909–99), librarian of the Book Club of California.

•  Publisher's red cloth, spine with black-stamped title. Offsetting to endpapers. Clean.  (35691)

For MINIATURES & NEAR-MINIATURES,  click here.
For Books with SPECIAL PROVENANCE,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150 & UNDER,  click here.

A Quick Introduction to Early Bookhands — The Enlarged Edition

Click the images for enlargements.

•  A revised and enlarged edition of this classic first published in 1949, incorporating both fresh text and additional illustrations; the latter, which are labelled as “plates” and printed on both sides of a leaf, identify the illustrated manuscript examples as to place and date of inditement and give the current location of the manuscript.

A lovely, informative guide to a considerable variety of handwritings both useful and ornamental.

Provenance: From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  Original illustrated paper over boards, with the dust jacket (a little worn with interior repair at top of spine). Clean. A very nice copy.  (41368)

NEW JERSEY BOOKS, 1801–1860

Felcone, Joseph J.

•  This second volume of the catalogue of the Felcone library describes the books and pamphlets printed from 1801 through 1860. There are over 1400 bibiographical entries in this volume. The contents, binding, provenance, and historical context of each book or pamphlet is described in rich detail. An indispensable guide for anyone interested in the history of New Jersey.

•  Publisher's red cloth, stamped in gilt on the spine. New.  (21048)

For the Shelley Fan, a Revelation & a Fine “Read” . . .

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Vol. I: “Shelley's own books pamphlets & broadsides posthumous separate issues and posthumous books wholly or mainly by him.” Reprint of the 1886 first edition.

•  Publisher's green cloth, spine with black-stamped title; minor wear to corners and spine extremities. Pages clean and crisp.  (26152)

For LITERATURE,  click here.

ALL the ACTUAL PRINTER'S BLOCKS for the *47* Illustrations
        of Zoeth Skinner Eldredge'sThe Beginnings of San Francisco
A DEMONSTRATION of “HOW”

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 withwrappers 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, thiscomplete 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)

13,600 Volumes, 631 Lots, & 80 English Antiquarian Book Dealers

Click the images for enlargements.

•  With the help of a sale catalogue annotated by an active bidder and a “complementary set of manuscript accounts of the insiders' settlements” following the sale, Arthur and Janet Ing Freeman analyze the library sold at Ruxley Lodge in 1919. The auction was notable for the quality of the books and yet the meager prices for which they were sold — all due to the work of a ring of booksellers. The effectiveness of the ring prior to its abolition in England is also generally examined.

From The Book Collector: Occasional Series, vol. 1.

•  Publisher's paperback (not issued in cloth); lightest edgewear, spine faded. Several tiny spots of foxing on page edges (not into margins). Near fine.  (37781)

Classic Spanish Bibliography — Inscribed by an Editor
*&* Presented to an Important Author

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition of this important bibliographical reference work: Gallardo's extensive notes on numerous rare and significant Spanish books and manuscripts, many of which were described herein for the first time. The notes were edited and compiled in vols. I and II by Remón Zarco del Valle and J. Sancho Rayon, and in vols. III and IV by Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo. Altogether, this four-volume set offers an impressive mass of detailed information, incorporating valuable literary fragments by and biographies of some of the greatest names in Spanish literature as well as some of the most obscure.

Provenance:  This copy from the library of author and diplomat Don Juan Valera y Alcalá Galiano; vol. I with a presentation inscription addressed to him on the half-title, with the bookplate of his son Luis Valera on the front pastedown of each volume. The inscription to Valera waswritten by one of the work's editors, Remón Zarco del Valle.

•  Palau 97065.   Contemporary brown morocco and marbled paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped title and volume number, vols. III and IV matching I and II very closely but not quite identical; joints, edges, and extremities rubbed, spines of III and IV lightly sunned. Vol. I with inscription and all vols. with bookplate as above. One leaf of vol. I with paper flaw, noticeable but not touching text; six leaves of vol. II each with tear at inner margin repaired some time ago, not touching text. Vols. I and II: pages slightly age-toned with occasional faint spots, almost entirely clean. Vols. III and IV: somewhat more pronounced age-toning, scattered mild spotting. Overall a clean, solid set with an interesting provenance.  (29360)

One of theMust-Reads

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  A standard reference work and overview of bibliography that is especially useful for the information it gives on 19th- and 20th-century book production, an area not well covered by other similar works.

•  New in shrink wrap — as discernable in our image!   Paperback edition.  (30403)

The Lyf of Seynt Katerine

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition, printed for the members of the Roxburghe Club: a 15th-century prose rendition of one of the most popular virgin martyr legends, transcribed from the original manuscript and extensively annotated. The title-page is printed in black and red, and the main text — which preserves the spelling and special characters of the Middle English — is preceded by a color-printed facsimile of the first leaf of the illuminated manuscript. The volume closes with a reissue of the Early English Text Society's printing of Einenkel's edition of an Early Middle English verse rendition of the saint's life, given in Latin and Middle English.

•  NSTC 0458171.   Later full navy morocco, spine with gilt-stamped title; spine gently sunned. Top edges gilt. Two pages with small spots of faint staining, overall gentle age-toning. A nice example of the Roxburghe Club'simpeccable publication standards.  (33492)

For CATHOLICA,  click here.
For RELIGION generally,  click here.
For TRANSLATIONS,  click here.
For LITERATURE,  click here.
For more of WOMEN's interest,  click here.
This appears in the GENERAL
       MISCELLANY — click here.

Classic — Invaluable

•  Marvelously inclusive and detailed encyclopedia of book, printing, and binding terms. A classic, and Donald Farren's introduction is a welcome addition.

•  Publisher's cloth, dust jacket, and contents as new.  (6107)

MUSICAL SCHOLARSHIP Printed Beautifully —
Printed Masterfully!   

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Dr. María Isabel Grañén Porrúa is Mexico's leading scholar of 16th-century printing in the Viceroyalty of New Spain and Juan Pascoe of the Taller Martín Pescador is Mexico's greatest living handpress printer. Her scholarship, based on archival research and the minute study of early colonial-era printed musical texts, and his precise and meticulous presswork are here combined to give us a masterful study of a neglected area of the history of the book in Mexico, in a volume that is joy in the hand and a jewel to the eye.

Prior to publication here, the extended essay had been “presentado en el simposio 'El libro en la Nueva España. Historiografía en Construcción.' Dirección de Estudios Históricos del INAH, octubre de 2017.”

Only 210 copies were printed: Florencio Ramírez composed the text using Dante, Centaur, Poliphilus, and Blado type. Juan Pascoe and Martín Urbgina printed the work on Tamayo De Ponte paper using a Vandercook cylinder press and two Washington handpresses. The work was bound by Fermín Urbina.

The two folding plates are printed in black and red, as is the title-page and the first page of text. Other illustrations are an Antonio Espinosa vignette, a woodcut of a kneeling Mexica man, and two printer's ornaments. All are printed from zinc plates.

•  Green shelfback with yellow paper spine label and matching yellow paper on the boards. Author and title printed on front board in a frame of printer's ornaments. As new.  (40095)

On the Estiennes & Their Peers — Bound by Bernard Middleton

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition of this account of the Estiennes and other important printers of their milieu, including much information on, excerpts from, and commentary on classical literature (many quotations being supplied in English translation in addition to the original languages) as well as details of political, cultural, and religious history of the time. The preface is signed by the Rev. William Parr Greswell, known as a scholar of Parisian typography, and the title-page attributes the editing to his son Edward Greswell. While Brunet was not wholly convinced regarding the Greswells' exactitude, he nevertheless concluded that this work made for an interesting read.

Bindings: 20th-century speckled calf framed and panelled 17th century–style in double blind fillets with blind-tooled corner fleurons, middle panels in plain calf, innermost panels framed with blind roll; spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels, raised bands, and blind-tooled composite motifs in compartmentsdone by a modern master. Back pastedown of vol. I with pencilled note reading “Bound by Bernard Middleton [/] Feb. '62.”

Provenance:  From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  Brunet, II, 1735; Lowndes, IV, 943; NSTC 2G21923.   Bindings as above; joints and edges rubbed, spines evenly sunned, minor scuffing to sides. Front pastedown of vol. I with pencilled annotation of old purchase price. Page edges untrimmed; a few leaves in vol. II with very short tears from outer margins, not touching text; faint age-toning and intermittent instances of light spotting, mostly but not entirely in upper outer corners. Vol. I with one 20th-century pencilled marginal annotation, vol. II with one pencilled date correction. A good example of 19th-century scholarship on printing and literary history, here in a lovely demonstration of 20th-century binding technique.  (37968)

Harvard Library Catalogue Signed byPresident Quincy

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First of the 19th-century catalogues of Harvard's holdings, hereuncut and unopened in four volumes, including the Catalogue of the Maps and Charts, which was published shortly after the three main volumes.

Provenance:  Inscribed to a Philadelphia social club “from the President & Fellows of Harvard University,” signed by Josiah Quincy.

•  American Imprints 1772 & 7465; Sabin 30729 (vols. 1–3) & 30730 (maps).   Publisher's quarter cloth and tan paper–covered sides, spines with printed paper labels; worn and soiled/stained but sound, with spines sunned and front lower outer corner of vol. I chipped. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplates, endpapers with call number, rubber-stamp on title-pages and a few others, no other markings. Front free endpaper of vol. I with inked inscription as above.  (26904)

For COLLEGES/UNIVERSITIES,  click here.
For CHILDREN/ EDUCATION,  click here.
For more Books with SPECIAL
     PROVENANCE,  click here.
This book also appears in the GENERAL
      MISCELLANY — click here.

The Famous Heredia Catalogue — withAuction Prices

Click the images for enlargements.

•  First edition:  Auction catalogue of the extensive, impressive library of bibliophile Ricardo Heredia y Livermore, Conde de Benahavís (1831–96). Heredia built “perhaps the greatest collection of Spanish books ever formed” (as noted by an old cataloguing slip laid into this set), incorporating the former Salvá y Mallén collection; this catalogue serves as an important reference work for a wide swathe of Spanish literature, theology, belles-lettres, etc.

The listings are augmented in the first three volumes by numerous in-text reproductions of illustrations and title-pages from the books. This copy includesauction prices neatly inked alongside every book.

•  Contemporary treed sheep, spines with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels and gilt-ruled bands; sides showing minor rubbing, edges, joints, and extremities moreso. All hinges (inside) cracked or tender, some endpapers with pencilled notations. Vol. I: Two pages with light offsetting from now-absent item, one leaf with lower outer corner torn away. Vol. IV with bookplate of Alvaro de Fontagud y Aguilera. Pages gently age-toned, most noticeably in vol. IV, with occasional light smudges; each volume with last page browned.  (29161)

For “EVIDENCE of READERSHIP,”  click here.
For COMMERCE / TRADE /
        FINANCE / ECONOMICS,  click here.

THE HILL COLLECTION

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Second edition, revised and enlarged. Combines the original three volumes (pub. 1974–83) into a single volume and incorporates additions made to the collection since 1983. The Hill collection, a gift to the Univerisity of California from Kenneth and Dorothy Hill, “remains the most extensive gathering of books that document early voyages of exploration and discovery in the Pacific (p. ix).”

With a wonderful biography of this great collector by his son (and distinguished bookseller) Jonathan Hill. The standard work!

•  Publisher's blue cloth, gilt lettering on spine; front cover very gently scuffed — a nice copy.  (36767)

For PACIFICA,  click here.
For VOYAGES, TRAVELS, & books on
  “EXOTIC” PLACES,  click here.

The Collector asAuthor & Publisher

•  First edition.

•  Publisher's quarter cloth. Very good condition.  (6597)

(Hofer, Philip). The Philip Hofer collection in the Houghton library: A catalogue of an exhibition of the Philip Hofer bequest. Cambridge: Harvard College Library, 1988. Folio. [6], vii–xiv, [1], 218 pp.; 100 illus.
$35.00

•  First edition. Illustrated exhibition catalogue.

•  Paperback. Handsome calligraphed covers. Very good copy.  (5224)

“R is for Readers”

Immel, Andrea.

Click the images for enlargements.

•  “It took antiquarian bookseller Justin G. Schiller years to find nearly four hundred Newbery books, translations, harlequinades, board games, cards, manuscripts, and related materials.  In 1990 [Lloyd E.] Cotsen purchased the collection from Schiller, knowing that such a trove was unlikely to be assembled again anytime soon.  Since then, the collection has grown to over 550 items, making it the largest either in private hands or in a public institution.”

“Jack Whirler's Alphabet — 'Jack Whirler' being Dr. Johnson's nickname for John Newbery, the firm's famous founder — was inspired by the engaging alphabets the Newberys published, which must have made learning to read such fun. It concludes with a prose nonsense poem from one of the most famous of all Newberys, The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread.”

Each letter is represented by two Newbery blocks (“M is for Moon and Mine”); the facing text provides information on the origin of the illustrations, some of which are by Bewick.

•  Publisher's white pictorial wrappers with navy blue illustrations and navy blue lettering to spine; very faint dirtying to one corner of front wrapper. Interior is bright and clean. (38679)

“Nurse Lovechild's Legacy” — The History of Nursery Rhymes

Click the images for enlargements.

•  Delightful, award-winning set offering both scholarship and aesthetic appeal: Facsimiles of the earliest known printed collection of nursery rhymes (Tommy Thumb's Song Book, 1744, followed by Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book Vol. II and The Pretty-Book), accompanied by an illustrated quarto volume featuring Immel and Alderson's bibliographical essay “Nurse Lovechild's Legacy” and their annotations to the rhymes. The commentary and the three miniature nursery rhyme volumes — the latter in scrupulous photo-facsimile, including the never-before reproduced Cotsen Children's Library copy of the Pretty Song Book — are presented in a well-designed cloth-covered clamshell case.

This set was limited to 500 copies, designed and typeset by Patrick Reagh and Patty Holden, and printed and bound by Ken Coburn.

•  Quarto in publisher's purple cloth with gilt-stamped title on front cover, miniatures in red, crimson, and violet ribbon-stamped cloth with gilt-stamped title on front covers, the whole in a purple cloth–covered clamshell case with compartments for each book; case with very slight sunning and ISBN label to back cover. All volumes clean, crisp, and unworn. (40870)

For LITERATURE,  click here.
For FACSIMILES,  click here.
For ILLUSTRATED BOOKS,  click here.
For CHILDREN / EDUCATION,  click here.
For MINIATURE & NEAR-MINIATURE ITEMS,  click here.
For “GIFTABLES” — mostly $150 & UNDER,  click here.

The LIST

•  First edition. A humorous dialogue about the press, accompanied by a trade list of its publications.

•  Sewn plain wrappers with pictorial cutout overlay. Fine.  (24123)

TO Part III

PLACE AN ORDER   |   E-MAIL US   |   PRB&M HOME