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

•  Publisher's blue cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title and gilt single fillet frame; spine sunned. A handsomely printed item not often seen on the market.  (39417)

This is thefirst book-form edition of the translation, following its original appearance in Keene's Anthology of Japanese Literature; three hundred copies were set by hand in Garamond and printed on Masa paper by Fredericks and David Beeken.

•  Original hand-stitched wrappers resembling bamboo grain, with paper label on front wrapper, in paper overlay matching the endpapers; outer overlay with minor edge wear and with small annotation (possibly from publisher) on label. A lovely and uncommon production.  (35979)

•  Osborne Collection, p. 49; Opie PP 330.   Publisher's color-printed paper–covered sides with teal cloth shelfback; extremities rubbed with a little loss to paper of covers at corners and front cover with an instance of abrasion affecting the “O” of “Abroad”; general light soiling and limited areas of old blue (ink?) staining. Bookplate as above; half-title with inked Christmas gift inscription dated 1882. Pages gently age-toned with a very few small spots, overall clean; sewing loosening but not broken; a children's book “read,” for sure. One ready for more reading, and looking! (40829)

•  Osborne Collection, p. 50; Opie PP 190.   Publisher's brightly color-printed paper–covered sides with green cloth shelfback; spine and edges rubbed, hinges (inside) tender, paper split along gutters and sewing starting to loosen, ready for ongoing comfortable handling if care is used. Pages very slightly age-toned with a handful of spots of foxing, overall clean. An outstanding Victorian children's production.  (40823)

•  ESTC T75210. Marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with printed paper label. Half-title lacking. Upper margin of title-page showing small abrasions and traces of affixed paper; title-page and several others stamped by a now-defunct institution.

Includes two poems by Whittier: “My soul and I” and “The wife of Manoah to her husband.”

Binding:  Publisher’s textured brown calf, covers with blind-stamped frame of foliate design; front cover suitably gilt-stamped with central vignette ofJesus and the woman at the well, back cover centrally gilt-stamped with a weary-looking woman harvesting grain (Ruth?). Spine gilt-stamped with foliate (ivy?) design and ornate title; all edges gilt.

Provenance:  19th-century stencilled ownership name of H. Amelia St John (Purdy) (1838–1925) of Yates County, NY.

•  Faxon 622; Thompson 145; Tepper, American Gift Books & Literary Annuals. (Second edition), 167.   Binding as above, gilt designs moderately rubbed, edges and corners worn, spine faded and head of spine pulled. Front free endpaper clipped to remove inscription; ownership stencil to front fly-leaf. Some pages with soiling, light foxing, or brown stains. Mezzotints well accomplished and several quite lovely.  (37280)

•  Disbound and Dispersed 229.   Publisher's blue paper–covered boards with black cloth shelfback, front cover with gilt-stamped printer's vignette and spine with gilt-stamped title. A fresh, clean copy of this elegantly produced homage.  (36841)

Vol. I opens with a rather nice mezzotint portrait of Wirt, engraved by A.B. Walter after Charles B. King; vol. II with an oversized, folding facsimile of a letter from John Adams.

•  BAL 11056; Cohen 2161; Howes K87; Sabin 37415.   Publisher's brown cloth, covers framed in blind-stamped strapwork, spines with gilt-stamped title and blind-stamped decorations; cloth lightly dust-soiled, chipped at corners and spine extremities. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplates, call number on endpapers, rubber-stamp on title-pages. Vol. II: one leaf of contents with two short tears. Pages clean.  (29413)

A fictionalized account of the author's life and family and friends, the novel is somewhat conventional but contains the seeds and hints of things that will mature, expand, and dominate in his later writings.

•  Charters A1a for the first edition, first issue; Charters notes the existence of advance reading copies, but does not give them a separate entry, nor speculate about the number bound as here.   Publisher's printed salmon paper wrappers, rear cover with a slim crease to paper (in production?); a fresh, unworn copy. Cryptic pencilled characters (totalling 13) on endpapers and rear endpaper with one very short tear. Housed in a quarter green morocco clamshell box.  (34815)

This isnumbered copy 298 of 750 printed by R. & R. Clark in Edinburgh for the Nonesuch Press, with the four collotype illustrations printed by the Chiswick Press.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with calligraphic bookplate of Norman J. Sondheim, American collector of fine press books.

•  Dreyfus, History of the Nonesuch Press, 75.   Publisher's quarter blue-grey paper with taupe paper–covered sides, spine with printed paper label, in original dust wrapper with black-stamped spine label; binding very slightly cocked with corners rubbed; wrapper sunned with edge chips and short tears, and interior tape reinforcements to two tears at spine and one at back fold. Offsetting from jacket flaps to endpapers; front pastedown with previous owner's pencilled annotations. A clean, solid, andquite pleasant copy.  (33868)

•  Publisher's quarter brown buckram and terra cotta cloth, spine with gilt-stamped title and decorative bands, in original glassine dust jacket; glassine torn with losses, spine evenly sunned, binding otherwise showing only minimal wear. Front free endpaper with short tears to fore-edge; volume's outer (closed) edges and endpapers showing faint foxing, not affecting pages proper, with pages very crisp and clean.  (39584)

one of 350 copies printed at the University of California Press for the Book Club of California

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with inked gift inscription from historian Carl Wheat, author of Mapping of the Trans-Mississippi West, to Joe Blumenthal (of Spiral Press fame), a “fellow member of WOOFFB.”

•  Publisher's quarter vellum and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped author/title; minimal shelfwear to outer corners. A fresh, clean copy with an interesting inscription.  (30622)

•  Very good, in publisher's cloth. Front free endpaper torn out. Preliminary pages with a few light creases in foremargins probably created from paper clips being fastened to them at one time.  (10711)

•  Stewart 94. Publisher's wrappers, front wrapper lacking, back wrapper torn and chipped. Publisher's slip detached (torn away, affecting four letters) but present. First and last few leaves lightly foxed.  (13989)

Both editions are reprintings of the London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1881 edition, which also is little held.

The work is printed in syllabic characters, with headings in English. The hymns are without the music.

•  None of the editions are listed in Banks; or Evans; or Newberry Library, Ayer Indians.   Publisher's green cloth, stamped in black; light discoloration of fore-edges of the closed volume. Very good.  (37012)

Kleist's life was a troubled one financially, psychologically, and creatively. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.) characterizes him as “by far the most important North German dramatist of the Romantic movement, and no other of the Romanticists approaches him in the energy with which he expresses patriotic indignation.”

Searches of NUC and WorldCat locate only two copies in U.S. libraries, but we know of a third.

•  Later 19th-century blue-green marbled paper–covered boards; foxing and browning as typical of the paper with but a few odd spots additionally, and perhaps six leaves with a stain as from a spill, extending across text but not hampering reading. Very readable in both senses; a decent, solid copy of an important work of German literature.  (33011)

The Fortsas hoax is legendary for having fooled many renowned collectors and dealers near the mid-point of the 19th century (1840, to be precise) into travelling to the small town of Biche, Belgium, for an auction ofnonexistent unique books that were bibliographically unknown!

•  Publisher's quarter off-white cloth and rose-colored paper over boards, with map endpapers. Top edge gilt.   (36339)

Knight, who was devoted to books and to literature from the time he was a small child, was a much-admired printer and publisher, as well as an author, reformer, and would-be educator: Many of his publishing endeavors were aimed at improving and enlightening the working class.

•  NSTC 2K7731. On Knight, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online. On binding cloth, see: Krupp, Bookcloth, style Wav3.   Publisher's textured brown cloth, covers blind-stamped with muse motif and title, spines with gilt-stamped title and blind-stamped decorations; lightly worn overall with some fading, vol. II spine head with traces of a strip of cloth tape. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplate, call number on endpaper, pressure-stamp on title-page, no other markings. Paper slightly embrittled (more so in second volume), with a few short edge tears. Externally ordinary; internally worthwhile.  (26860)

The original author's name appears in innumerable variations according to various transcribers' nationalities; Count Georg Wilhelm von Kniphausen (or Knyphausen) of Nienort (or Nienoort) was also known as George Willem (or Guillaume), Comte van Kniphausen, etc.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 28892.   Contemporary treed sheep, recently rebacked with complementary mottled calf, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label; original leather showing expectable rubbing/cracking. Title-page with institutional pressure- and rubber-stamp; no other marks. One leaf with old burn damage (the ash from a pipe??) to lower inner portion, margins repaired, loss of a few letters without obscuring sense; one leaf with closed tear from outer margin and no loss; one leaf with a corner taken, just touching text without loss; upper corners dust-soiled, and pages generally age-toned, with no brittleness or other “issues.”  (27242)

•  Publisher's blue-green cloth, white spine label with blue lettering; one very faint scuff to front board. In original tan paper slipcase; light spot of sunning to one side. Interior is bright. A beautiful copy!  (38304)

•  Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped red leather title-label (a little darkened). Three leaves with offsetting from now-absent laid-in item. Some upper corners bumped; one leaf with repairs to inner margin, touching but not obscuring text. Endpapers and some edges with a little soiling; generally, quite clean.  (25365)

The paper is of an extremely high quality, and near-vellum-like in its feel; the title-page and several others are given touches of red; every page bears a beautiful border of swooping vines printed in blue.

•  Bradbury 32.   Publisher's limp vellum, spine with blue-stamped title; slightly (and unsurprisingly) sprung. A clean, crisp copy.  (35731)

This is numbered copy 110 of 500 printed andsigned at the colophon by the artist.

•  Publisher's blue linen–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped vignette, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label, in striped paste paper–covered slipcase; volume crisp and clean.  (35259)