•  Rosenbach, Children's, 421; Welch 249.12; Shaw & Shoemaker 19892 & 20586.   Publisher's light boards with salmon-colored paper covering. Browning as in all copies seen today. One leaf with short tear from lower margin, just touching text. Solid, and engaging from multiple perspectives.  (38925)

•  Cagle & Stafford 389 (for first ed.). Not in Brown, Culinary Americana.   Publisher's printed blue paper wrappers, spine and edges rubbed, front cover with spots of discoloration; offsetting inside wrappers from staples. Pages very slightly age-toned. Delightful for those who like to bake, those who like to eat, or those who just like to appreciate implausible confectionery accomplishments.  (35008)

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

•  Publisher's printed paper wrappers, slightly faded, spine rubbed; front wrapper and first few leaves with horizontal crease. Pages with light offsetting, otherwise clean.  (41178)

The “J. Evans & Son” imprint was most often used between 1813 and 1820; prior to that it had been just Evans, and afterwards it was Evans and Sons. Above the imprint line here isa large woodcut vignette of Charles leaving home as his pious mother prays for him on her knees — similar, but not identical to the illustration found on the J. Marshall imprint of this item. Evans started his printing and bookselling career as an employee of Marshall's, before the two spent a number of years feuding in court over the press and its profits, as rivals.

• NSTC J899.   Removed from a nonce volume. Pages age-toned with scattered small spots of light foxing; upper outer corner of title-page creased.  (40976)

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)

Posthumous second edition in English, “translated from the French, with notes and engravings, illustrative and supplementary, by Andrew Ure.”

Uncut, partially unopened copy.

•  Uncut, partially unopened copy. Publisher's quarter cloth with paper covered boards; some discoloration to cloth, light chipping to board edges. Ex–social club library: paper label at top of spine, 19th-century bookplate, call number on endpaper, pressure-stamp on title-page, no other markings. A clean copy with the plates good and crisp; as noted above, an uncut, partially unopened copy.  (27388)

George graduates from Bates in 1905 and, by the final diary in 1912, he is an accomplished secondary-school physics teacher in Worcester, MA, with a master’s degree from Clark University, and he is taking additional (presumably doctoral) courses at Columbia University during a teaching sabbatical.

Each volume here opens with a printed section offering calendars, postal rates, almanac facts, etc.; usually, George has used the back pages for personal accounting, addresses of friends, and other memoranda. For space reasons, his entries must be laconic, but he has filled most space there is. Only the final few diaries have significant unused sections. A long descriptive analysis is available on request.

•  Virtually all diaries are bound in leather or leatherette, a few with the lower third of the rear covers removed neatly, and the “set” lacking only the volume for 1906. Some volumes are written in pencil, later ones mostly in ink, in a legible hand. Very good. (39290)

The printer has opened the text here with a rather nice 5-line initial “P.”

NUC and WorldCat locate only one library (National Library of Spain) reporting ownership of the actual broadside, but we know of another in the National Library of Chile.

•  Medina, Mexico, 8091.   As issued, with a later horizontal fold. One small wormhole through the folded document, touching one one letter in each half.  (41008)

In sum, thiscomplete array of the blocks used for printing a substantial and well-regarded Titanic-era book looks like something that was put on a printing house shelf one afternoon in 1912 at the end of an ordinary project for the pressmen and simply stayed there. Seeing it in on its present PRB&M shelf, coherent and unmessed-with, is like walking up to that shelf just about precisely 100 years later.

•  On the Beginnings, see: Cowan & Cowan, Bibliography of the History of California, 193. For a list of all its images and notes on their origins, see: http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hbbegidx.htm.   The paper wrappers present are variously just fine or age-toned or browned, chipped, torn along folds. ALL the blocks are in good condition; this is not a sort of thing easily damaged!  (29741)

This archive seems destined to be used not only by historians of Italian-American history but by historians of immigration generally, émigré culture at the beginning of the 20th century, fashion, self-help, education, advertising, and entrepreneurship, to mention but a few obvious areas of social research.

•  A few items quite worn, but overall generally only minor wear. Some items are on poor-quality paper of the era and thus brittle. A gathering fully ready to be worked with, and by multiple sorts of scholars.  (39404)

•  Very good condition and easy to read.  (31203)

•  Publisher's printed paper wrappers, stapled; small scuffs, back wrapper with streak of staining, pressure point from a front-wrapper scuff or prick unobtrusively carried throughout. This ephemeral, eye-opening item is now scarce.  (41057)

•  Brunet, VI, 1720 (no. 30066); Graesse, IV, 679.   Later plain cream linen, spines with titles stamped in brown; minor sunning to spines and to top front edge of vol. II. Edges untrimmed, most signatures unopened; dust-soiling to edges and into many margins; foxing, creasing and cockling variously; some leaves in vol. I with short tears from outer margins (often where an illustration needed to be placed inside an unopened signature). Of interest for scholars of public morals and popular culture, the book trade, and illustration in France from the 15th century through the middle of the 19th, among other topics. (40866)

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)

•  NSTC 2A17980 (for all years 1855–61).   Removed from a nonce volume. Title-page with small inked numeral in upper outer corner, otherwise clean.  (17033)

•  Lightly in later wrappers; small ownership stamp eradicated from title-page. A very good exemplar.  (24386)

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Provenance: Front free endpaper with inked inscription reading “A Thanksgiving Appreciation to Miss Alta Anderson from the Parents and Pupils of the Emerson St. Presbyterian S.S. Nov. 28, 1917.”

Signed binding: Publisher's deep violet-blue cloth, front cover with wide gilt border of floral and vine design, spine with gilt-stamped title and fleurons. Signed “EE,” with the second E reversed: Edward B. Edwards, who also designed the interior frames.

•  Binding as above, spine slightly dimmed. Pages and plates clean. A lovely copy.  (28954)

•  Publisher's teal cloth, spines with gilt-stamped title; spines with gilt slightly dimmed and minor extremity wear, front cover of vol. II with a small light smudge. A solid and pleasant set, with its pages very crisp and clean.  (33164)