•  NSTC 2D970.   Publisher's gray-blue paper wrappers; front wrapper with tiny hole, spine creased with one chip, edges and corners rubbed. Pages age-toned, otherwise clean. A solid, clean copy of a scarce item.  (36558)

Maryland

Vol. I opens with a steel-engraved portrait of the author, done by Henry Cook after Hervé; vol. III is illustrated with an oversized, folding plate of a water-engine intended for millwork, devised by the author, and a plate of another of his inventions: the automated “chamber fire escape”, which enables anyone to lower him- or herself from a high window. This is the third edition, following the first of 1807.

•  NSTC H625; Sabin 30461.   Contemporary speckled sheep, spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels; vol. I with joints and extremities refurbished, vols. II and III with spines and edges rubbed, old strips of library tape reinforcing spine heads. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplates, call number on endpapers, pressure-stamp on title-pages, vols. II and III with paper shelving labels at top of spines (vol. I showing signs of now-absent label). Vol. I title-page with offsetting from frontispiece; vol. III with pp. 69–72 excised (two leaves of a rather long religious-themed letter from Harriott to his son) and with upper portion of one leaf crumpled, reinforced some time ago. Some light age-toning, intermittent small spots of foxing and ink-staining, pages generally clean. Utterly absorbing.  (30651)

This is a very large and beautiful version of the U.S. “letters patent” document, with an elegant engraved eagle, the calligraphic blazon “The United States of America,” and a handsome engraving of the Patent Office building in Washington (drawn by A.A. von Schmidt and engraved by W.H. Dougal) occupying almost the entire top half of the first page.

Henderson's story as an inventor, involving emigration from England, “field work” building railway bridges in Chile, and residence in the late-19th-century U.S. industrial centers of Baltimore and Philadelphia, is interesting both as individual and asrepresentative of American inventors' careers in a very inventive era.

•  Henderson's papers are held at the Hagley Museum, & Library, Wilmington, DE: see, https://invention.si.edu/william-m-henderson-papers-1847-1893.   Laced together with a light blue silk ribbon; folded. Some foxing, especially on drawing; soiling on exterior fold with traces elsewhere; and spotting to ribbon and blue-green wafer.  (8638)

      Some of both the voyages and the maps make their first published appearances here—among them the New England map depicting the Maryland and Virginia coastlines, engraved by R. Michault after one contained in Richard Blome’s Description of the Island of Jamaica, part of which work appears here translated into French. Altogether, a volume notable both for its strong African and North American content and for the aesthetic appeal of its plates and pleasingly ornamented typography.

Sabin 36944; Alden & Landis 674/159; Beinecke Lesser Antilles Collection 68; Baer, 17th-Century Maryland, 78. Recent 17th-century style mottled calf with covers framed in a gilt roll and double-panelled in gilt fillets with gilt-stamped corner fleurons,; spine with gilt-stamped leather title and author labels and gilt-stamped decorative devices. Several pages (not including title) and the versos of a few plates stamped by a now-defunct institution. Paper slightly embrittled. Light waterstaining to a number of leaves and plates, mostly in margins; the first map with two repairs. One leaf (blank?) prior to Colonies Angloises excised; lacking the folding map of the Nile. A good copy, in a handsome binding of recent vintage and contemporaneous style.  (8746)

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)

•  BAL 14856; Shaw & Shoemaker 48824; Wegelin 1066. On Neal, see: Dictionary of American Biography, XIII, 398–99. Period-style quarter tan cloth over light blue paper–covered boards, spine with printed paper label. Dedication page and a few others (not including title) stamped by a now-defunct institution. Waterstaining to upper margins and some inner page parts, with final leaves darkened and a few spotted with foxing. Some upper edges chipped; final leaf with inner margin repaired.  (13727)

A pencilled annotation in one margin of this copy reads “The author is not aware that the people in the Southern States are not called Yankees”; one particularly anti-American remark later in the volume has been lined through in pencil.

•  Sabin 27570; Howes S1115.   Publisher's speckled sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label; covers sunned unevenly, edge/extremities rubbed, head of spine showing traces of now-absent label. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplate on front pastedown, front free endpaper lacking, pressure-stamp on title-page. Title-page with supposed author's name inked in upper margin. Waterstaining to lower outer corners of first few leaves; scattered spots of foxing and staining; one signature much browned, showing the different effects of time and “life” on different papers.  (26376)