The classic Aldine printer's device appears on the final page of this text.

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

•  Adams A2152; Goldsmid, Aldine Press at Venice, 73; Renouard, Alde, 49.2; Index Aurel. *110.036; EDIT16 CNCE 3381; UCLA, Aldine Press: Catalogue of the Ahmanson-Murphy Collection (2001), 89.   Period style medium brown calf, spine lettered in gilt, raised bands accented with blind fillets extending onto covers to terminate in trefoils; covers framed in blind with trefoils at forecorners, green silk ribbon bookmark present and all edges gilt. Light pencilling on endpapers; offsetting from previous binding to first and last few leaves. A clean, lovely copy.  (37603)

Provenance: From the collection of Robert Sadoff, M.D., one of the nation's leading forensic psychiatrists and a director of Penn's Center for Studies in Social-Legal Psychiatry, sans indicia.

•  Garrison & Morton 4918.1 (for first ed.); Printing & the Mind of Man 120 (ditto); Kent, One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature, 18; Grolier, Langland to Wither, 31.   Bindings as above, edges (particularly outer ones) rubbed, spines showing a few small scuffs. Pages clean. A distinguished example of this enduring classic.  (39608)

Searches of NUC, WorldCat, COPAC, and VD17 fail to find any library reporting ownership of this edition of the Schreibkalender and WorldCat alone finds copies of this edition of the Prognosticon (at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the Staats und Staatsbibliothek Augsburg). Searches of KVK were inconclusive.

This example particularly showcases the “True Relation,” as the separate title-page for that item is the first leaf present here; the title-page and preface for the Defence are absent.

•  ESTC T189434; Lowndes 616–17; Allibone 490.   Recent quarter mottled calf and marbled paper–covered sides, leather edges blind-tooled, spine with gilt-stamped leather labels, gilt-dotted raised bands, and gilt-stamped decorations in compartments. First three pages institutionally pressure-stamped, lower (closed) edges rubber-stamped; title-page with inked and rubber-stamped numerals in lower margin. Frontispiece, main title-page, preface to Christian's Defence, and final leaf lacking (the last interrupting the text of a brief account of Drelincourt's life). Title-page stained with inner margin reinforced and tear repaired some time ago. Pages browned, foxed, and stained, first and last few with edges tattered; some corners dog-eared. Two leaves torn, without loss of text; one leaf with outer margin chipped, affecting four words without loss of sense. A book often “read to death” . . .  (25807)

Provenance:  Stamps of two U.S. Redemptorist libraries (one in Ilchester, MD; the other in New York state).

•  VD17 1:001581Y; DeBacker-Sommervogel, II, 1899; Robbins 283; Graesse, Magica, 47; Coumont, Demonology and Witchcraft, D45.3.   Contemporary limp vellum with slightly yapp edges, evidence of now-lacking ties; vellum soiled, front joint (outside) with excellent repair, new endpapers. Scattered waterstains; discoloration in some margins from old damp; some gatherings and individual leaves browned, as in all other copies seen. Title-page trimmed at top, not quite into plate; without the folding table in Book II; old library stamps in some margins and an old sticker. A solid, satisfying copy.  (33026)

•  NSTC 2S31074. Removed from a nonce volume. Clean save for some smudging to outer margin of one page.  (16760)

Gregory (ca.?540–12 March 604), pope from 3 September 590 to 12 March 604, is thepatron saint of musicians, singers, students, and teachers, and is famous for instigating the first known large-scale mission from Rome — the Gregorian Mission, to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons in England to Christianity.

Provenance: Cut-down Blumhaven Library bookplate (i.e., private library of Herman Blum, 1885–1973, of the Frankford section of Philadelphia, PA); given by Mr. Blum on his 89th birthday to his grandson Robert Martin Blum, as per light blue ballpoint pen inscription on front pastedown.

•  ISTC ig00405000; Goff G405; HC 7963*; Pell 5357; IGI 4422; BMC V 457; GKW 11401.   Half vellum and cream paper covered boards of the first half of the 20th century, soiled; without the final blank leaf (only). Bookseller's description glued to front pastedown above provenance information as above; additional tape or glue stains on same and tape stains on rear pastedown. Title- leaf seriously browned, torn with blank lower area lost, and mounted, with image of St. Peter and all but one letter of type preserved; repairs to upper margin and fore-edge of the first text leaf; waterstaining in first half, diminishing after first signatures.  (39630)

This author enjoyed great success among feminine (and young) audiences with his gothic tales of horror and woe, most notably with his one novel, The Monk, a youthful production that earned him his nickname. Shelley was especially fond of Lewis's work, although Byron mocked the author's “gibb'ring spectres” and “infernal brain” in the poem “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.”

•  NCBEL, III, 743 (first ed.).   Later 19th-century half sheep in imitation of morocco over marbled paper sides, worn and abraded; leather chipping over head of spine, covers pressure-stamped by a now-defunct institution, spine with paper shelving label. Title-page and several others stamped; endpaper and final blank separated but present (former with date slip); many pages, not unexpectedly, show light to moderate spots of foxing, and there is some staining. Last leaf torn across outer corner taking top author's name in ads on verso (it was John Beckmann) and most of three words of the last poem's last verse (“herte should breke”).  (5414)

Printed with a two-page, small-type list of the subscribers to this Irish edition, some entries noting a profession or a locality.

•  Wallis, Newton, 328.2; ESTC T18642.   Recent full brown calf, Cambridge style binding: Round spine, raised bands accented with single gilt rules above and below each, gilt center device in five spine compartments; black spine label, gilt. Covers tooled in blind with center compartment with corner devices; new endpapers. Old rubber-stamp along inner margin of title, with another to lower margin of dedication page and an inked line of presentation to its gutter; age-toning and stray stains. A good+ copy of the uncommon Dublin edition.  (33120)

•  Publisher's quarter green cloth with paper-covered boards. Rebacked in sympathetic cloth and new paper label (antique style) applied. Boards show age-stains and wear but are solid. Old library pressure-stamp on title-page. In an open back slipcase of green library cloth; spine of box with author, title, and call number in gilt. A nice copy, sound for reading.  (21773)

The volume begins with a most handsome emblematic engraved title-page signed C. De Mallery involving a ship at sea against a sky labeled “Lutetia” (for Paris) surmounting an elaborate architectural frame containing the title and incorporating elegant symbolic ladies and more, followed on the next leaves by a dedication to the esteemed French collector Jacques-Auguste de Thou (Thuanus, 1553–1617). Beautiful floriated woodcut initials, factotum initials, head- and tailpieces decorate the text, which is anexquisite example of printing.

It seems that there were related texts printed at the same time that are sometimes found bound with this in a variety of combinations, but this not universally.

•  Adams S1061; Schweiger, I, 287.   Period-style full dark brown mottled calf tooled in blind, gilt title and tools to spine, red edges. Small hole from natural flaw in upper corner of title-page and one other leaf; oval-shaped spot in lower margin of title-page from an erasure (?), offset onto the front fly-leaf; light age-toning and occasional foxing in some margins, with a few stray ink marks from printing and maybe two or three dots from oxidization of the paper. Accounting for these minor expectable flaws, the present volume isreally very, very nice and the portraits areterrific.  (30177)

Additional volumes continued to be published for many years, under the stewardship of other editors; Stenzel was responsible for I through V.

•  Recent black-flecked paper–covered boards, spines with printed paper title and volume labels. Some upper edges in vol. I and lower corners in vol. II bumped; all edges stained red except for vol. III, which has speckled edges. Vol. III (only) with light offsetting/show-through from print; in fact a clean, nice set. (25346)

Evidence of Readership: Underlining or other markings in a number of the pamphlets in very neat ink and pencil, sometimes colored.

•  Recent navy blue cloth, printed paper label on spine with gilt ruling and decoration, new endpapers; all pamphlet wrappers bound in text. Marked as above, one pamphlet with label residue to front wrapper.  (36132)

Willems is not fond of this book, saying of it “L'ouvrage est assez peu recherché, et n'a qu'une valeur médiocre.” Its “middling value” in his day may have been due to its typography: Daniel Elzevir had the book printed in the shop of the heirs of Jan Elzevir in Leyden. Our copy is attractive, however, and the work is certainly an important one that was read, loved, and cited in its day with enormous enthusiasm.

With a particularly engaging engraved title-page, and with woodcut ornamental initials and head- and tailpieces.

Provenance:  20th-century bookplate of Elizabeth Wade White (1906–1994), an American poet, activist in progressive causes, and author of The Life of Anne Bradstreet: The Tenth Muse. In 1938 she had a brief affair with Valentine Ackland (1906–69, born Mary Kathleen Macrory Ackland, the English modernist poet). In 1939 White met Evelyn Virginia Holahan (1905–85) who became her life partner. With White's pencil note “August 1929. Bought at the Hague for 22 guilders.”

Binding:  18th-century crushed green morocco, spine with raised bands and a red leather spine-label; covers and spine-compartments double-framed in gilt, the latter with center devices. Gilt inner dentelles, all edges gilt, silk marker.

•  Willems 1464; Copinger 4882; Goldsmiths'-Kress 01963.   Binding as above, rubbed at joints (outside) and with spine rather attractively sunned to olive. Lacks the index leaves for De prodigiis; still, a text-complete handsome volume with a very interesting provenance.  (39815)

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

•  Kelly, Checklist of Books Published by William Pickering, 1836.18; Keynes, William Pickering (rev. ed.), p. 96; NSTC 2W34141; Pickering & Chatto, William Pickering (catalogue 708), 277.   Quarter dark brown roan in imitation of morocco and rose-pink paper–covered boards, spine lettered in gilt; paper gently rubbed and faded, front hinge (inside) just starting at top, two small pencilled notes on endpapers. Booklabel as above. Light age-toning, some light staining on endpapers. Signatures mostly unopened. Early English poetry presented within a historical context and in “antiquarian” style. (39487)