BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS

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

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•  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)

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Handsome, Scholarly Edition ofDibdin’s Cambridge Notebook

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•  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

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•  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)

W.A.D. 1880 – 1980

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•  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)

“Coloured by Machine” — “My Father”

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•  A sweet toy book consisting of a poem about a little boy's love for his father. The last verse reads, “Whose eye the glistening tear betrayed, / Seeing his boy was not afraid / To give a poor black man his aid? / My father.”

“Embellished with Engravings, and Coloured by Machine,” this chapbook was part of Raine's “Coloured Toys” series; the publisher boldly claims that “he has constructed a machine, whereby he can with astonishing facility colour . . . in a style much superior and lower than can be done by hand.” William Raine is listed in extant Baltimore directories between 1840 and 1842 ONLY, meaning his career was a short one.

Scarce:  WorldCat finds only six holdings of this edition.

Provenance:  From the children's book collection of Albert A. Howard, sans indicia.

•  Not in American Imprints. Moon, Mary (Belson) Elliott, U226.   Publisher's printed paper wrappers, paper splitting along spine, wrappers and contents lightly creased. First page with early inked ownership inscription partly obliterated (“Miss Harriet ----(?)----“); last page with short tear from lower margin, not touching text or image though affecting border; foxing and minor staining as of a child's reasonable use without abuse. The father here encourages curiosity, compassion, and healthy play including a toddler trick that makes Mother a tad nervous; one thinks, “What a nice family!”  (38492)

Overview ofCA Printing History, in Miniature — Satisfying CA Provenance

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•  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)

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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)

GOOD forBoth Reading & Reference

•  English and Flemish panel-stamped bindings of the 16th century are damned similar in appearance. Fogelmark adds depth to our knowledge of each, and of which are which, picking up where Oldham's work on English blind-panel bindings left off with guesses and hints. We have a copy of this in our reference library, and you should too.

•  New, in publisher's gilt-stamped green cloth.  (24991)

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

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•  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)

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

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•  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

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•  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

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•  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

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•  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

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•  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)

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This appears in the GENERAL
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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)

Ars Typographica

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•  The final number (vol. I, #4) of Goudy's distinguished periodical, published 16 years after the first number, and the intervention of McMurtrie's periodical of the same title. A total of 514 copies were printed.

•  Cary 216.   Printed grey wrappers; a few small tears, covers and top edge soot-stained with a majority of top and side margins and a few whole pages affected, some worse than others. A “survivor” copy priced accordingly.  (36763)

One of theSpecial Copies

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•  No. 187 out of 200 special numbered copies (out of a total edition of 650) containing “an extra page of supplementary information identifying the work to which Mr. Goudy has assigned those serial numbers which are missing from the chronological table.”

•  Publisher's quarter grey cloth over black paper–covered sides, front cover with black- and red-printed paper label, without the glassine dust wrapper; exterior very good and attractive and interior with endpapers, and fore- and bottom edges, affected by patches or streaks of smoke intrusion not approaching text. Priced according to its “survivor status,” this is an elegant book still.  (38620)

On the Estiennes & Their Peers — Bound by Bernard Middleton

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•  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

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•  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)

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The Famous Heredia Catalogue — withAuction Prices

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•  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)

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        FINANCE / ECONOMICS,  click here.

THE HILL COLLECTION

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•  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)

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  “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)

All theDETAILS of a Printer's Life

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•  Charming, very personal account of Hopkins's printing career, from his early days as a proofreader to his time with De Vinne and his subsequent independent success with his own Marion Press. The recollections are illustrated with four plates, showing the De Vinne building, an old hand press, the first Marion press, and a portrait of the author. This isone of 315 copies printed (of which 250 were for sale) at the Timothy Press; the colophon of this copy is unnumbered.

•  Publisher's green and cream marbled paper–covered sides with green cloth shelfback, spine with gilt-stamped title; minimal wear to spine extremities, otherwise a lovely, clean copy.  (36843)

One Daring! Title . . .

The whole world

•  Catalogue 128. Only a few illustrations, but 1175 items.

•  Original wrappers. Some staining and sun discoloration on the cover.  (14322)

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

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