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MARYLAND
More than One Lifetime's Worth of Adventure & Interesting Ideas 
Harriott, John. Struggles through life, exemplified in the various travels and adventures in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, of John Harriott, Esq. London: Pr. for the author, 1815. 12mo (18 cm, 7.1"). 3 vols. I: Frontis., xvxv, [1], 443, [1] pp. II: xii, 428, [2] pp. III: vii, [1], 479, [1] pp. (lacking pp. 69–72); 1 fold. plt., 1 plt.
Click the images for enlargements.
one
of the founders of the Thames police, a clever and independent
mariner who went adventuring around the world before settling down to become
an Essex justice of the peace and eventually Resident Magistrate of the Thames
River Police (a.k.a. the Marine Police Force, sometimes called England's
first official police force). Here he looks back on his remarkably varied youthful
escapades, including travelling in the merchant-service, visiting “the
Savages in North America,” meeting the King of Denmark, serving in the
East India Company's military service, and narrowly escaping such dangers as
tigers, poisonous snakes, floods, fires, and scamming fathers-in-law. If the
narrator is to be believed, the two issues that caused him the chiefest distress
in life were pecuniary difficulties and other people's unchivalrous treatment
of women. He also has much to say about law and business in the New World and
the Old, slavery in America, forcible incarceration in private madhouses (with
excerpts from a first-person account of such), and the nature of farming in
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware,
Maryland,
and Virginia, as well as the state of affairs in Washington, DC, and, of course,
the history of the creation of the Thames police.
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)
Improvements in TWO KINDS of Pumps — Patented!A Very LARGE & Attractive DocumentHenderson, William M. Patent No. 38308: Improvement in pumps. [Washington, D.C.: United States Patent Office, 1863] . Folio (appr. 50 × 27 cm, 20" × 14.5"). [3] ff.
Click the images for enlargements. 
a drawing of the device as improved upon, and [3] is Henderson's official description of it.
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 as
representative 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)
A Prominent Lawyer, Skillful Orator, & Charming Family Man Kennedy, John Pendleton. Memoirs of the life of William Wirt, attorney general of the United States. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1849. 8vo (23.7 cm, 9.3"). 2 vols. I: Frontis., 417, [1], 4, [48 (adv.)] pp. II: 450, [2] pp.; 1 facs.
Click the images for enlargements.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 Second Edition of
My Mutilated Poems”Neal, John. The battle of Niagara: Second edition — enlarged: With other poems. Baltimore: N.G. Maxwell (pr. by B. Edes), 1819. 18mo (15.6 cm, 6.2"). Add. engr. t.-p., 272 pp. 
“Goldau: Or the Maniac Harper,” along with a few shorter works. Neal, who went on to become a prominent voice in 19th-century American literature, describes in the preface here his distress over the first edition, which he calls “crowded and disfigured with innumerable errors — chiefly typographical, however; though in some cases, whole lines were left out . . .” Alas, this edition also required an errata leaf.
• 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)
“The Details of the Late War” Subaltern (Georg Robert Gleig, attrib.). A subaltern in America; comprising his narrative of the campaigns of the British army, at Baltimore, Washington, &c. &c. during the late war. Philadelphia: E.L. Carey & A. Hart; Boston: Allen & Ticknor, 1833. 12mo (18.3 cm, 7.25"). 266 pp.
Click the images for enlargements.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)
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