Provenance:  20th-century signature in ink on front free endpaper of Francis E. Condict Ballard; earlier pencilled inscription of H.W. Rivers on front fly-leaf.

•  Shoemaker 28356.   Contemporary sheep, spine with gilt-stamped title-label; covers and front (blank) pages expertly reattached and leather at head and foot of spine renewed. Inscriptions as above; back endpapers with pencilled missive in Spanish. Mild foxing and noticeable old water- and dampstaining, almost all marginal. A good, solid, usable copy.  (8506)

Additionally appearing are various tables and charts, including genealogical tables; a chronological register of Hebrew high priests; a comprehensive chronology of general Bible history; a Jewish calendar; and an extensive index of authors' names included in thebibliography of the best sources on Scripture that precedes the dictionary in vol. I. The second volume closes with a “Dissertatio de tactice hebraeorum” by D. Equite Volard.

Bindings: Contemporary blind-tooled alum-tawed pigskin over beveled wooden boards, tooled using a variety of rules and foliate rolls and stamps in concentric rectangular panels to frame a central lozenge (constructed of multiple stamps) on each cover. Each volume bears remnants of two clasps, and both spines have raised bands with author and title written in early ink in the upper two compartments. Blue edges.

Provenance:  Discalced Carmelite Convent at Schongau, Bavaria (early ink inscription, title-pages, both volumes).

•  Graesse, II, 20n. See Brunet, I, 1495; and Vancil, pp. 44–45.   Binding as above, scuffs and dust-soiling; spine of vol. II pulled and lower spines speckled with ink. Ex-library: bookplates of two collections on front pastedowns and fly-leaves, stamp on bottom edges and rear pastedowns, call number on spines (crossed out), and penciling from a third library on front pastedowns. Clippings from old booksellers' descriptions on front pastedown of vol. I. Both title-pages trimmed just grazing print; title-page in vol. I tipped onto following leaf, with tear in outer margin and another starting near printer's device; otherwise the odd small marginal tear or isolated stain only, and occasional light foxing in both volumes including to plates. Very minor worming to one plate in vol II. An indispensable reference and an illuminating “browse.”  (30573)

Binding:  Contemporary dark green straight-grain morocco, spine with gilt-stamped rules, rolls, and devices. Covers framed with a delicately curly gilt-rolled border; the center panels, within, accented by gilt-stamped corner fleurons. A bit of additional filigree in blind appears both within the rules of the gilt border and within the border on each center panel, to nice subtle effect. Gilt inner dentelles. All edges gilt.

•  NSTC C355.   Binding as above, leather rubbed at edges and joints, spine a bit dimmed. Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of John Allan Powell; front fly-leaf with inked inscription dated 1922. A few spots of foxing, pages otherwise clean. A pretty and very English production for this Portuguese poet.  A charming volume.  (23077)

Kalispel is the language of the Flathead Indians of Montana, Idaho, eastern Washington, Alberta, and portions of British Columbia.

•  Pilling, Salishan, 29; Newberry Library, Ayer Indians, Kalispel 2.   Publisher's pale green wrappers, minor chipping or abrasion to wrappers with small loss of paper at top of spine and to one corner. A nice clean copy.  (35116)

Binding:  Black morocco, spine lettered and tooled in gilt using six different rolls and a single and a triple rule; two compartments stamped in blind. Covers single-ruled in gilt around a frame of blind-stamped flowers with a blind-embossed “chipped” diamond design at center that incorporates two different texturings and a central circle-and-swirls motif; board edges and turn-ins gilt in zig-zag patterns. Marbled endpapers and all edges marbled in an identical design. Green ribbon place marker still attached.

Provenance:  Presentation label noting “To Angelo C. Hayter, from his affectionate father, Sir George Hayter. 1864" on front pastedown; title-pages with barely legible rubber-stamp from St. Michele's in Bologna. George Hayter (1792–1871) was a noted English painter who served as Queen Victoria's Principal Painter in Ordinary. Most recently in the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  Bound as above, gently rubbed, tailband partially detached; provenance evidence as above, four examples of a chipped margin, trimmed corner, or tremoin. Light to moderate age-toning with a handful of spots. A clean and handsome copy.  (37740)

Binding:  19th-century calf, spine with gilt-stamped title, raised bands, and small circular gilt-stamped decorations in compartments; board edges and turn-ins with gilt rolls and covers framed and panelled in blind with gilt-stamped corner fleurons. All page edges stained red, red silk placemarker present and attached. Binding done by Koehler (with his stamp on front free endpaper).

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

•  Brunet, I, 1701-02; Index aurel. 134.656; Moreau, Editions parisiennes du XVI siecle, III, 1158. This ed. not in Adams or Mortimer, French 16th-Century Books.   Bound as above, spine and edges rubbed, sides scuffed. Endpapers with pencilled annotations and with binder's small rubber-stamp as above; title-page with date faintly inked in an early hand. Final leaf (printer's vignette) in facsimile, title-page with lower outer corner with small loss of paper in blank area repaired via excellent leaf-casting, and a similar excellent leaf-cast repair to two inner areas of last text leaf with a few letters supplied in pen and ink facsimile. One leaf with small printing flaw affecting a handful of words without loss of sense; three leaves at back with small semi-circular areas of worming touching a few letters, also without loss of sense. Pages very clean and type very clear. A scarce and desirable volume.  (37747)

This is numbered copy 733 of 2000 printed, signed by the artist at the colophon. The monthly newsletter is laid in.

Binding:  Bound by the Tapley-Rutter Company in red and gold damask cloth with a gilt-stamped leather title-label on the spine.

•  Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 466.   Binding as above, in the original brown paper–covered slipcase, slipcase spine with cream paper label printed in brown; lightest bit of shelfwear to slipcase, volume fresh. A stunning book, outside and in.  (39043)

Searches of NUC and WorldCat locate only four U.S. libraries reporting ownership (NY Historical, AAS, Library Company, University of Texas).

•  Not in American Imprints.   Stitched as issued. Damp-cockling and faint hints of old arrested mildew.  (38385)

The Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical was an assemblage of rulings given equal force with the canon law, although the rulings themselves were not based on canon law.

•  STC (rev. ed.) 10076; ESTC S101555.   Removed from a nonce volume. A very nice, clean copy with an array of marginal markings — Xs, asterisks, “vid.,” and the odd hand-with-pointing-finger. (21226)

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with early inscription in red pencil: “Gibson's [/] Queens [/] Oxon. [/] 1787[?].” Most recently in the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  Biblos: Wing (rev.) B3632; ESTC R204258; Griffiths 45:3. Psalterion: Wing B2720A; ESTC R204259. Tes kaines diathekes: Darlow & Moule 4702; Wing B2733.   Bound as above, worn and showing expectable acid-pitting with edges, extremities, and spine rubbed; spine label cracked with loss of central portion of label. Endpapers with early inked annotations in Greek and English. A few leaves with light waterstaining in upper portions; one leaf with tear from outer margin into text, with loss of one letter; one leaf with short tear along paper flaw, without loss of text. Final work with early inked underlining; rear fly-leaf with a few jotted references in Greek. A scholar's copy of this nice example of early English Greek liturgical/scriptural printing.  (37826)

This is numbered copy 1048 of 1500 printed.

•  Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 452.   Binding as above, spine with gilt-stamped title, in original glassine dust jacket and original slipcase; volume very clean and fresh, glassine wrapper intact, slipcase all but unworn. A very nice copy.  (34057)

The second work is Peter Martyr's commentaries on Corinthians, here in the second edition. It has a full-page woodcut portrait of him on the recto of leaf aa6. The printer's woodcut device is on the title-page and there are numerous woodcut initials. The sidenotes are printed in italic while the text proper is in roman.

Peter Martyr (8 September 1499 – 12 November 1562), was an Italian theologian who began his religious life as an Augustinian friar, converted to the Protestant cause, was closely associated on the continent with Ochino, Bucer, and some prominent Lutherans, and, while in England where he held the Regius Chair of Divinity at Oxford, was an intimate of Thomas Cranmer and Bishop Jewel.

Both works are uncommon in these editions in the U.S.: We locate four copies of the first title and two of the Vermigli, but one copy of each title has been deaccessioned, meaning current holdings are three and one only.

Binding:  Contemporary alum-tawed pig over wooden boards with bevelled edges and metal and leather clasps; one clasp perished. Leather tooled elaborately in blind using a variety of rolls and fillets, including one roll incorporating the date 1546, a medallion of David and his harp, and another medallion depicting John the Baptist with the words below the image, “Ecce Agnus Dei.”

•  Clement: VD16 C4070; Index Aurel. 104.903; Adams C2106. Vermigli: VD16 B5054; Adams M788.   Bound as above. Ex-library with bookplate on front pastedown, small blind pressure- (not perf-.) stamp on title-page and remnant of charge pocket at rear; six-digit number stamped in lower margin of one leaf. Early inked ownership indicia on title-page and old private ownership stamp on front free endpaper; a little old marginalia and underlining. A very little foxing and the odd spot only. Excellent copies of both works in a handsome contemporary binding.  (24827)

The translator, “Lelardo,” was in fact Manuel de la Torre Lloreda. In this fine press edition of Las vigilias, Juan Pascoe's press (Taller Martin Pescador) has invited scholars Catarina Camastra and Moises Guzman Perez to contribute what are significant essays on Las Vigilias, its true author, its Mexican translator, and the work's printer. The essays on the translator and printer are important additionally for the history ofthe portable press of the Independence era, the Imprenta del Ejercito Imperial de las Tres Garantias.

The colophon explains, “Florencio Ramirez compuso las letras Blado, Castellar y Polifilo para este libro, y Juan Pascoe y Martin Urbina imprimieron 150 ejemplates sobre paper Strozzi de Ponte entre noviembre de 2014 y agosto de 2016.” The copies are unnumbered. This is one of the few hardbound copies.

•  Uncut and partially unopened. Quarter café au lait crushed morocco with oatmeal-colored linen sides; dark red leather spine label and dark reddish brown endpapers (bound by Lucía Farías Villarreal of Monterrey, Mexico: http://www.ovejaverde.com.mx/). New.  (37102)

This copy bears the full-page woodcut portrait of Pope Clement VII on the verso of the fourth preliminary leaf, which is not found with all copies. Additionally, the title-page bears an interesting 14-piece composite woodcut border and the verso of that page has a stunning full-page woodcut of the coat of arms of Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor, to whom the letter is addressed. The coat of arms is surrounded by the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The text is printed in roman with side- and shouldernotes; the lay-out is elegant and there is one large, handsome woodcut initial.

As usual, the letter is here bound with Peter Martyr's De Rebus, et insulis noviter repertis, which provides an account of the recently discovered islands of the West Indies and their inhabitants. It is often considered a substitute for the lost Cortés letter.

One of the most important early descriptions of Mexico and of the first encounter of the West with the Aztec civilization, this is a work of bedrock importance to the New World. No complete copy has appeared for sale since 1985.

•  Alden & Landis, European Americana, 524/5; Sabin 16947; Harrisse, BAV, 125. Sanz 933–34; Medina, BHA, 70; Church 53; Burden 5; JCB, German Americana, 524/4; Streeter Sale 190.   18th-century half vellum and sprinkled paper over boards, gilt red leather label. Map supplied in expert facsimile; blank leaf H8 lacking. Bookplate of John Carter Brown (Library) on front pastedown, with deaccession stamp. Occasional very minor soiling in the text, else very good — a copy clean and even crisp.  (26808)

•  Sabin 16953.   Contemporary treed calf, front joint (outside) starting at top to open. A good+ copy — in fact, a rather nice one.  (20510)

Provenance:  Calligraphic bookplate of Norman J. Sondheim, American collector of fine press books.

•  McKitterick/Rendall/Dreyfus 12.   Quarter vellum with gold paper sides; edges rubbed, wrapper lacking. Top edge gilt on the rough. Minor offsetting to endpapers, otherwise clean.  (32037)

•  ESTC T94112; later edition in Cordier, Bibliotheca japonica, col. 425–26; DeBacker-Sommervogel, II, 1641.   Contemporary Cambridge-style calf, rebacked some time ago with raised bands double-ruled in gilt, two gilt-lettered leather spine labels, and new endpapers; rubbed, especially spine, with a few abrasions. Ex-library as above: evidence of former call number label on spine, bookplate on front pastedown, rubber-stamp on endpaper and title-page, accession pencilling on title-page verso, circulation materials at back. Light pencilling on endpapers, one lower outside corner a tremoin, one leaf repaired, two with small holes and loss of a letter or two, one with a medium tear lightly touching text; light to moderate spotting and age-toning. Not pristine and priced accordingly — yet, a good book.  (36729)

•  Schoenberg, Jesuit Mission Presses, 74.   Folded, never bound. Top edges opened. A clean, nice copy.  (35311)

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)

The translator, W. Kenneth Thompson, selected thirteen episodes from Bassi's text, and illustrations includingone double-page plate and twelve miniatures, reproduced from photographs of the manuscript in five-color facsimiles printed by offset lithography at The Meriden Gravure Company in Meriden, CT. Giovanni Mardersteig designed the text in his own Monotype Dante on Manunzia paper, and oversaw production with his son Martino at the Stamperia Valdonega in Verona, Italy. The edition was limited to 1950 copies, of which this is no. 164, as written in ink below the colophon.

•  Bound as above, spine very lightly sunned with light pencil smudge; case with one side a little soiled and a limited patch of staining. Text very fresh and clean.  (30549)

While one copy of Diodorus bound with Petit's Justinus was found at Harvard, no record of the apparently extremely scarce de Marnef variant could be located.

Provenance: Charles Spencer, Third Earl of Sunderland, lot 3934 in the Sunderland Library sale (1882).

•  Diodorus: Moreau 1508:64; not in Schweiger. Justinus: not in Moreau, not in Schweiger. On Diodorus, see: Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, 146. 17th-century English calf, panelled, with gilt fleurons and elaborate front and back gilt floral center motifs, each worked with a minuteWE.  (You need a magnifying glass, but this is THERE.) Overall, showing wear with some leather chipped from spine, covers abraded, and joints starting. Pages mostly clean, with slight staining to inner margins from binding supports. Gilt cover lozenges still bright and the whole safe to be worked with.

From the preface: “This fifth edition of the Lonkundo Hymn Book is a result of the joint labor of the missionaries and the native Christians.”

Evidence of readership: Several hymns have pencilled emendations.

Provenance:  Signature of “Mrs. Hensey” on front fly-leaf, followed by, in same hand, “School & Church, as revised by me (in 1918).” Per Smith, “Alice Ferren Hensey, 1907–1931 [was a] talented musician and poet . . . [she] translated many hymns and songs, and taught them to new Congo Christians.”

This is a mission press production and was actually printed in Bolenge.

•  On the Disciples of Christ Congo Mission, see: Fifty Years in Congo by Herbert Smith.   Publisher's black and brown textured cloth, title stamped in blind on front cover and pencilled numeral to its upper outer corner; front free endpaper lacking and sewing beginning to stretch or weaken, with two gutter cracks apparent though the textblock is, still, essentially sound.  A nice copy.  (37586)

Binding: Bound at the Stamperia Valdonega in a silk-finish gray-green cloth with green gilt-stamped spine labels.

•  Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 482.   Bound as above, without the glassine dust jackets (as usual); occasional light bumping to edges, light rubbing to spine-label of vol. II, and small faint stain to box label. Notably bright volumes, inside and out!  (38938)

Binding:  Publisher's blue cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title. Cloth is ribbed and fits Krupp's Rb3 pattern.

Evidence of readership: One pencilled footnote, arguing that capital punishment is the will of the divine.

•  American Imprints 55455. On the binding cloth, see: Krupp, Bookcloth in England and America, 1823–50, p. 40.   Binding as above; spine and board edges gently faded, extremities rubbed. Mild to moderate foxing throughout. An interesting book in a good example of an early American cloth binding.  (34765)