•  Recent, handsome black moiré cloth with caramel color spine labels; text blocks excellent with only the very occasional instance of a generally light spot/stain, short closed tear, or dog-ear. Handsome on shelf, comfortable in lap.  (27436)

The work also appeared in 1551 in French from the same press.

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

Searches of NUC and WorldCat locate fewer than ten North American libraries reporting ownership.

•  Renouard, Estienne, 102, no.5; Goellner, II, 904; Schreiber, Estiennes. 128; Cioranesco 7375.   Bound in modern boards, paper of spine chipping off; old paper shelf label inside front cover and multiple “generations” of bibliographical pencilling to front endpapers. Once upon a time bound in a sammelband as evidenced by the 17th-century manuscript folio numbers (29–49, 30 repeated); some lacing to paper due to iron gall ink. Some browning/foxing of the paper; still, paper and sewing strong. A good copy.  (37770)

The title is printed within a woodcut “arabesque” border and the text is in roman within line borders defining space for sidenotes.

Evidence of Readership: Occasional pencil marks in text; final blank with old pencil notes and an inked couplet of yet greater age: “To make poor mortalls more in Love with breath / The Gods conceale the benefitts of Death.”

Provenance:  Signature on front free endpaper of “Thos. Hekt”(?) dated 1822; older ownership note on inside rear board of “Fransisci Heyct”(?); 20th-century bookplate of the famous collector Boies Penrose II.

•  STC (rev. ed.) 6251; ESTC S107343.   Contemporary calf over paste boards, modest blind double-ruled border on boards, gilt beading on board edges; binding worn, lacks pastedowns, hinges (inside) open but binding strong. Inner margin of title-leaf discolored from old glue. Text generally clean with only light waterstains in some early leaves' upper inner parts, a few stray stains or pencil marks as noted above in text, one leaf with a short closed tear. Without the imprimatur leaf preceding the title and lacking the dedication leaf, which was an insert between A2 and A3 and is frequently lacking; final blank leaf, also usually missing, present here with notes as above. Ownership notes as noted. On the whole, a good copy.  (34472)

Provenance:  From the children's book collection of Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  Rosenbach, Children's, 456; Welch 263; Shaw & Shoemaker 25216.   In publisher's printed tan stiffened wrappers with vignette on on upper wrapper; list of children's books “with copper plates” on lower wrapper. A copy in very good condition.  (38818)

•  Publisher's green cloth–covered boards, spine with gilt-stamped title, clean and fresh; dust jacket sunned and lightly worn with spine head minorly chipped. Pages age-toned and a few with instances of light staining. An unusually nice copy.  (41474)

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

Provenance:  From the children's book collection of Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 22669; Welch 266.2. Not in Rosenbach (but see 574 for Totten's 1819 edition).   Tan wrappers, illustrated with a woodcut of a soldier on the front and an allegorical figure titled “Excelsior” on the rear in a scene incorporating an eagle and a liberty cap among other elements. Some of the paper of spine has rubbed away; closed 2" split starting to front cover; else very good.  (38776)

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)

This is one of four editions of this part all of which were printed in 1701, including a false-imprinted one done in Dublin.

•  ESTC T035011; Goldsmiths' 3775; Knuttel 14605; Hanson, 50.   Removed from a nonce volume. Inner margin of title-leaf with a small raggedly torn area and a bit of staining; age-toning, occasional foxing, and dust-soiling. Paper a bit fatigued. Only a “good” copy and priced accordingly.  (36769)

•  Cowan & Cowan, Bibliography of the History of California, 169; Gaer, California Literature of the Gold-Rush, F 24; Gumuchian 2204.   Publisher's cream paper printed in green and gilt with title on front cover and swan vignette on back, nicely recased preserving original paper covers in light green linen–covered boards, using endpapers marbled in violet and pink; original paper covers lightly dust-soiled, back cover with minor chipping to paper edges (repaired). Pages with age-toning most visible at margins; a few light spots of foxing. A very attractive copy of a VERY attractive book. (41666)

Uncommon: WorldCat and NUC Pre-1956 locate only seven U.S. institutional holdings.

•  Martin & Walter 9944.   Removed from a nonce volume. First page with paper shelving label in lower inner corner, touching lower edges of seven letters without obscuring sense, and with pencilled inscription in upper outer corner. Half-title and 22 pp. of additional supporting material lacking. Pages mildly age-toned with a handful of small spots, otherwise remarkably clean.  (30864)

Binding: Contemporary treed calf. Spine with gilt-stamped red leather title label, gilt-stamped compartment lines, and floral devices within compartments.

•  Brunet, II, 576. Binding somewhat rubbed and starting to crack over joints, though very firm; some onetime water exposure visible on front cover (a not entirely unattractive effect). Pages with a bit of very minor spotting, and some offsetting from plates. An attractive copy of a pretty book.  (8295)

•  Publisher's very colorful (bright pink and bright green) printed paper wrappers; slightly cockled, small spot of staining to foot of front wrapper. A nice piece of political ephemera.  (34158)

•  Not in Brown, Culinary Americana. Front wrapper says “Mother's Club,” but all online references to the organization give either “Mothers' Club” or “Mothers Club.”.   In original hand-inked wrappers, on original plastic rings; wrapper design faded, edges worn with short tears. Pages clean, unmarked, and unstained. A surely uncommon if not now unique item, with no holdings discoverable.  (38138)

This isnumbered copy 119 of 450 printed. The volume was set in Monotype Poliphilus and printed by hand on hand-made paper by Hodgkinson of Wells, with the binding done by Evans of Croydon.

•  Publisher's half brown morocco and terra cotta cloth, front cover leather with gilt-stamped horse and rider vignette, spine with gilt-stamped title between two raised bands; corners bumped, spine foot and lower raised band slightly rubbed. Signatures unopened.  (35218)

•  Removed from a nonce volume. Title-page with paper shelving label, touching one letter of publication line, and with pencilled monogram in upper outer corner. First piece (only) of gathering present. Pages age-toned.  (30827)

•  VD17 3:301520H.   19th-century half calf and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title and date label; mildly rubbed overall. Title-page with rectangular portion on either side of printer's device excised and repaired (repair apparently done some time ago), with excision just barely touching the ends of the motto banner. First few leaves browned; foxing and offsetting throughout. A worthwhile exploration of mathematical thought as it stood toward the close of the 17th century and a good solid copy. (39902)

•  Untrimmed, unbound copy, simply stitched. “Title-page” with inked call number in lower inner corner, penciled initials in upper outer corner. One leaf torn across in upper margin, not touching text. A few instances of light spotting; uncut edges slightly darkened.  (33251)

Degree defense broadsides were an important source of income for Colonial-era printers in Latin America and the printers offered “package deals” to the families of the graduate and post-graduate degree postulants; the packages were geared to the students' families economic means. Broadsides could be large (folio) or small (8vo), have an engraving or not, have a border of type ornaments or not, and be printed on standard paper or colored paper (usually blue); if one splurged, one could get the announcement printed, as here, on silk. The usual total number of copies printed for each candidate is unknown at this time, but is likely to have been only one or two dozen, and we also don't know if more than one silk copy was printed when that top option was in fact ordered. In extravagant cases, one can imagine one for the degree candidate, one for the parents, one for each godparent, etc.; still, such cases would probably have been few.

Certainly, the printers would have been willing to rake in as much money as possible, on each happy occasion, and the richly beautiful silk mementos — doubtless proudly displayed for years going forward in homes or offices — would have been excellent ongoing advertisements. Equally clearly, however, the number of copies of all of the defense broadsides surviving is small, and the survival of those on silk isvery small.

No copies of this broadside are traced via the usual bibliographies, nor via NUC, WorldCat, COPAC, KVK, CCILA, CCPB, or the OPACs of CONDUMEX, the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, and the national libraries of Spain and Mexico.

•  Not in Medina, Puebla; not in Palau; not Ziga & Espinosa, Adiciones a la imprenta en Mexico; not in Garritz, Impresos novohispanos; not in Gavito, Adiciones a la Imprenta en la Puebla.   Blue-green silk with braided edges using gold and silver metallic thread, and with blue tassels incorporating silver thread and fittings attached on all corners. Minimal wear andstunningly attractive.  (34730)

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 an unnumbered copy.

•  Bound as above, in original slipcase; case very lightly shelfworn and case and rear cover of volume each with one minute brown “dot,” hypothesized as appearing due to nature of paper. Text very fresh and clean.  (40893)

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)

•  Brooks 1146; De Lama, II, 218–19.   Contemporary speckled paper–covered boards, framed in single blind roll, spine with later gilt-stamped red leather title and publisher labels; spine darkened, edges and extremities chewed, back joint starting from head and foot. Front pastedown showing small line of adhesion from now-absent affixed label. A very few faint spots of foxing only, indeed happily few as Bodoni productions can go; internally, an attractive, wide-margined example, with its page edges untrimmed.  (40201)

•  VanderPoel B207.   Laid into original green wrappers as issued, wrappers chipping at fore-edges and a little soiled. Plates very good.  (38156)

Among the American authors is Tom Paine writing on Gen. Charles Lee, whom a 19th-century reader has identified in pencil as “A traitor to [the] American cause.”

•  Wegelin 932; Shaw & Shoemaker 2148. Period-style quarter tan cloth over light blue paper–covered sides, spine with printed paper label. Title-page torn, with outer corner chipped, resulting in loss of four letters from end of title; now mounted. One contents leaf with edge tear extending into text; last leaf with short edge tears. Some light to moderate foxing, with pages age-toned; final page with shadow of pencilled “Finis” and p. 80 with pencilled comment as above.  (3027)

The work is illustrated with a frontispiece and three copper-engraved plates done by Louis le Grand after designs by Gravelot.

•  Sabin 20201; Palau 73986; LeClerc, Bibliotheca Americana, 3180; Barbier, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes, 1003–04.   Contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt extra with gilt-stamped leather title-label; corners, joints, and spine extremities rubbed, spine with two pinpoint holes and surface cracks to leather. Front free endpaper partially separated, with pencilled annotation on verso; inner margins of one plate and opposing page with small area of offsetting from now-absent laid-in item, pages otherwise clean. All edges marbled in blue. An attractive copy.  (25799)

Via NUC, WorldCat, Moreau, COPAC, and the OPAC of the BNF we find no record of the apparently extremely scarce de Marnef variant.

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.  (11308)

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.” One of those missionaries was “Alice Ferren Hensey, 1907–31, a talented musician and poet . . . [she] translated many hymns and songs, and taught them to new Congo Christians” (Smith). 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 green cloth-covered light boards, spine sun-faded. Some dust-soiling and dog-earing, but withal, a nice copy.  (40440)

The first and last pages (i.e., 1 and 16, both blank) are pasted to the inside of the wrappers.

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

WorldCat locates only three libraries reporting ownership (Pierpont Morgan, Yale, Princeton) but we know of two others (Oxford, Toronto Public).

•  Publisher's rust-colored wrappers; the original single stitch now perished and leaves loose. Very good.  (38910)

•  Publisher's cloth, front cover and spine decoratively gilt-stamped; spine, lower edges, and corners a touch rubbed. Top edge gilt. A few leaves and plates with waterstaining to lower outer corners, scattered spots of light foxing.  (18409)

WorldCat locates only eight copies of this second edition, including one in the library of the American Kennel Club.

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

•  Not in Ing.   Publisher’s quarter olive paper over blue boards, with paper spine label; edges rubbed, corners bumped, and spots/soiling to boards. Page edges untrimmed. Minimal, faint spotting to interior; pages mildly cockled; semi-puncture to margin of pp. xi–xvi, corner of one leaf folded in twice. A solid and pleasant copy, in unaltered guise, of this early dog training manual.  (37913)

Provenance:  College of Pharmacy of the City of New York.

Evidence of readership: A reader of the late 16th century has corrected some of the text and has added interesting marginalia in Latin that expounds or expands on sections of it. A later reader, probably of the late 18th or early 19th century, has labeled some of the woodcut illustrations with the plant names using Linnaean and post-Linnaean taxonyms. For example some have “W” at the end of the Latin name, for Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765–1812), others “Schmidt” for F.W. Schmidt (1764–96), most just have an “L” at the end, for Linnaeus.

•  Pritzel 2350; Nissen, Botanische Buchillustration, 517; Hunt Botanical Catalogue 143; Nissen 517; DSB, IV,138–9. Voet, Plantin Press, 1101; Adams D722; Arents, Adds., 74; Alden & Landis 583/23; Index Aurel. 154.557; Bibliographia Belgica D117.   Recent quarter mottled brown calf with green and red stone-pattern marbled paper sides; raised bands, each accented above and below by single gilt rule and with gilt center devices in five spine compartments. Library stamp as above on title-page and three other pages. Minor worming in some, a very few, margins, most notable in upper margins of pp. 260–89; gently age-toned, and a few leaves with browning or foxing; overalla crisp, clean, decidedly desirable copy.  (34549)

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

WorldCat locates only four U.S. libraries (Yale, Harvard, UNorthCarolina, USouthernCal) reporting ownership.

•  EDIT16 CNCE 17628; Index Aurel. 157.997.   Modern wrappers; all edges red. Text is clean, save minimal slight foxing to upper margin.  (40806)

A full-page woodcut portrait of author is found on the verso of leaf *8, along with the printer's woodcut device on the title-page and woodcut headpieces and initials throughout the text.

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

•  Grässe, II, p. 424; Marsili-Libelli, Anton Francesco Doni,; 57; Edit16 CNCE 17710; Gamba 1367 (note). . .   Early 20th-century vellum over light boards, ruled and tooled and lettered in gilt; marbled endpapers. Possible ownership name in one margin (not deciphered). Light waterstaining in some upper and lower margins, with occasional limited effect to text; overall in facta good and attractive copy.  (40658)

Provenance:  Front pastedown with bookplates of Robert Wayne Stilwell and Brian Douglas Stilwell.

•  Brooks 672; De Lama, II, 124; Giani 102 (p. 59).   Modern quarter brown morocco and marbled paper–covered boards, spine with gilt-stamped title; traces of wear to front joint and extremities. Title-page with spot of staining affecting final two letters of epigraph from Vergil, carrying through to first dedication leaf; foxing in the variable degrees typical of so many Bodoni productions. Clean and solid; page edges untrimmed.  (40177)

Arthur Fenner was the fourth Governor of Rhode Island from 1790 until his death in office in 1805 and Dorrance was a justice of the Court of Common Pleas. The root of all the litigation was whether Dorrance had swapped the cadaver of a suicide for a hat.  Needless to say, there is political animosity at work here.

The whole was “carefully compiled from notes correctly taken by several gentlemen who were present during the whole course of the trial.”

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 2156; Cohen, Bibliography of Early American Law, 11968.   Removed from a nonce volume, lacking the wrappers. Age-toning and a few spots of foxing. Else very good.  (39246)

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)

Searches of NUC Pre-1956 and WorldCat locate only three U.S. libraries reporting ownership (!!!).

•  Late 19th- or early 20th-century half dark blue morocco with marbled paper–covered sides, spine with raised bands and gilt-stamped title; extremities and edges showing minor rubbing, back cover scuffed. Wrapper edges browned. Pages with a scattering of tiny spots and faint smudges, one leaf with short tear from lower margin, overall clean andmore than pleasing.  (39412)

Binding: Publisher’s red morocco, covers framed in gilt rolls, front cover with gilt-stamped angel vignette and title, back cover with gilt-stamped urn, spine gilt extra. All edges gilt.

•  Binding as above, edges and extremities rubbed with leather chipped at spine head, spine somewhat darkened and with gilt dimmed (not lost); appearance of three small pin-type wormholes through leather at front joint, but this is associated with the sewing stations. Pages gently age-toned, with a few lightly foxed or stained; first few leaves loosening.Delightful lying on a table in 1856, delightful doing the same thing now. (15208)

•  Osborne Collection, p. 29.   Publisher's cadet blue cloth, front cover pictorially stamped in red and orange; without dust jacket (as is almost always the case), spine slightly sunned, extremities rubbed, sides with minor dust-soiling. Front hinge tender. Pages mildly age-toned with margins thumbed, overall clean. A pleasing copy of this charming Doyle production, with the uncommon publisher's note.  (41167)

A work of considerable significance for English canon law. There was another edition in 1641, without any place of printing specified, in 8vo format, and having 122 pages.

•  Removed from a nonce volume, semicircular area torn from lower portion of the title-page costing two letters of the imprint. Old ownership inscriptions on title-page. Library stamps in lower margin of last page.  (21014)

In 1886 Andrew Duncan, a surgeon of the Bengal Army, received the Prize for this extended study of military, preventive, and tropical medicine with a focus on scurvy, typhus, cholera, yellow fever, dengue fever, smallpox, venereal disease, and malaria.

Binding:  Prize binding of the Army Medical School (housed in the Royal Victoria Hospital). Contemporary tan calf with black leather gilt label, round spine, raised bands, gilt and blind tooling on spine; modest gilt rolls and fillets to form border at perimeter of boards. Gilt supra libros on front board. Gilt-rolled turn-ins. Marbled endpapers and marbled edges.

Provenance:  Presentation leaf noting gift of this copy as a prize to A.E.H. Prince (of the Indian Medical Service) in the Department of Hygiene at the Army Medical School, Netley, signed by Col. J. Lane Notter, Professor of Military Hygiene, and dated 1896. Most recently in the residue of the stock of the F. Thomas Heller bookselling firm (est. ca. 1928).

Searches of NUC and WorldCat locate only five U.S. libraries (NIC, NNNAM, PPCP, PPiU-M, PCarlMH) reporting ownership.

•  Binding as above; front joint (outside) rubbed and starting in lower inch, small area at top of spine pulled with small loss of leather. Else a very nice copy; clean, sound, and withnotable provenance.  (39794)

signed 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)

“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)

•  On Dunlap, see: Oxford Companion to the Theatre, 211. American Imprints 24237; BAL 5026; Howes D571; Sabin 21303.   Publisher's quarter green diced cloth and tan paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped title; edges and extremities rubbed, corners bumped, spines sunned, sides with spots of staining and discoloration. Front hinges (inside) tender. Ex–social club library: spines with paper shelving labels, front pastedowns with 19th-century bookplates and inked shelving numbers, title-pages and one other in each volume rubber-stamped, no other markings. Some outer corners of vol. II lightly waterstained; a very few instances of small spots of staining.  (27558)

•  In good clean condition, tipped onto a leaf of 19th-century paper; now in a Mylar folder.  (6747)

From the Vatican press, this bears the woodcut arms of Pope Gregory XIV on its title-page and an array of interesting woodcut initials and ornaments in the main text, which is printed in a small roman font with some use of italic type. This is one of few books published by this press at the beginning of the time whenAldo Manuzio the Younger was appointed director. There was also a folio edition in the same year.

Provenance:  As above, with 18th-century autograph “J. Cotes” and small manuscript price (?) on title-page; later manuscript casemark “Case B 1 14" on front pastedown. Most recently in the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

•  Adam D1192; EDIT16 CNCE17949. Hodgson, Northumbrian Documents.   Contemporary English calf, spine plain-style with raised bands and without labels; scratches and rubbing to modestly blind-ruled boards, upper corners bumped; front pastedown lifting but fully present, and upper outer corners (only) of one portion very shallowly rodent-nibbled. Dust-soiling notable to endpapers, title-page, and a few other leaves; otherwise text clean with minimal age-toning, occasional passages of light waterstaining, and the odd corner-crease or dog-ear. A handsome and interesting book with enhancing provenance. (41340)

But for many, of far more interest is the“Poem, by Sarah Helen Whitman. Recited before the Rhode-Island Historical Society on the evening of January 13, 1847; previous to the delivery of Judge Durfee's discourse” (sectional title at rear). Whitman (1803–78) was variously a poet, essayist, Transcendentalist, spiritualist, and romantic interest of Edgar Allan Poe! The author of her page on the Poetry Foundation website characterizes her as “intelligent, gifted, witty, and warm” and says “She was widely read.” The fact is she is one of few women given space in the Bibliography of American Literature, that bastion of white male authors.

Provenance:  Gift inscription on front wrapper, “Jno. McClellan, Esq. with the respects of E. Dyer, Jr.”

•  BAL 21359B; Sabin 21425.   Yellow printed wrappers. Very good.  (40377)

Given the nature of these publications and that they were printed not in Paris or another large printing center, it is clear why all are scarce, even in France. Truly a remarkable compendium of church history during the French Restoration, July Monarchy, and Second Republic.

•  19th-century marbled paper–covered boards with roan shelfbacks, spines with gilt-stamped titles, dates, and bands; spines and extremities rubbed. All edges speckled. Two pages with neatly inked French annotations in (different) early hands; one title-page with early inked ownership inscription; one single-page letter addressed by hand to M. le Curé à Savianges; one order with a missing bullet point and the date added in a neat early inked hand; a few pieces with dates inked in. Several leaves with creases from mailing folds, one cover leaf with a postal cancellation from Buxy, 7 June 1840. Many leaves variously with generally very light, occasionally moderate waterstaining; occasional spots of foxing or staining scattered throughout, a few leaves age-toned, pages generally clean. A trove of data in physically informative forms.  (37160)

Provenance:  Title-page with inked inscription of Redmond Pursell (possibly Purcell), dated 1717; verso inscribed “Patt. Weldon his hand, dated May the 4th 1777,” with “Patr. Weldon, His Book” on the first preface page and another Pursell/Purcell inscription on the first text page.

•  ESTC N31275.   Modern leather old style with most of original covers laid down on the modern boards, spine with blind-tooled raised bands and gilt-stamped leather label; original leather worn and cracked. First few leaves with edges darkened/chipped and those fly-leaves with edge tears; title-page and preface margins repaired. Inked inscriptions as above, title-page additionally with later inked institutional shelf number and “withdrawn” note; fly-leaves with early inked calculations and budget notes; three instances of early inked marginalia and two printed shouldernotes with marks of emphasis. Pages age-toned with scattered small spots (a few signatures darkened or with more notable spotting), some corners bumped, smudges to last few leaves; one leaf with small hole with loss of seven letters. Solid, usable, and attractive on the shelf.  (34133)