New Arrivals A Spring Miscellany of 53 Recently Acquired Books
Michael R. Thompson Rare Books 8242 W. 3rd Street • Suite 230 Los Angeles, CA 90048 mrtbooksla.com [email protected] • (323) 658 - 1901
Item #1
With Carborundum Prints, Hand-Colored Etchings, and an Ink Painting; in the Deluxe 3D Binding and Signed by Susan Allix
1. [ALLIX, Susan.] Ithaca. [A poem by] Constantine Cavafy. [London: Susan Allix, 2018.]
5¾ inches by 5½ inches. [3] blank ll., [25] pp., [4] blank ll. Hand-set and printed in black, red and violet on Zerkall paper; with geometric cut-out accents, 2 fold-out leaves, and black Japanese paper collages. Also with 3 carborundum prints, 3 hand-colored etchings, and 1 ink painting.
Black goatskin and white calf, tooled with title, over boards. Extended back board. Geometric calf onlay to cover, with three-dimensional accents of mother-of-pearl and gold and silver wire. Pastedowns are dyed Nepalese paper; free endpapers are sand-colored, textured stiff paper. In a wine-red cloth clamshell case with paper and calf onlay. Interior of case includes raised supports to protect the three-dimensional cover and is lined with the same sand-colored paper stock as the free endpapers. A fine, as-new copy of a beautiful book. $1,750
One of 18 total copies, signed and numbered by Susan Allix on the colophon. This is a special copy featuring the goatskin-and-calf cover, the three-dimensional accents, and the deluxe clamshell box; neither the colophon nor Allix’s website note a limitation for the special copies. Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
“Ithaca” by C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933) was originally published in Greek in 1911 and later appeared in English in The Complete Poems of C. P. Cavafy (1948). The English translation of “Ithaca” was popularized in the United States by Jacqueline Kennedy, who was vocal about her love for the poem. Susan Allix’s Ithaca is an abridged version of the poem, which was inspired by Odysseus’ return to his home country in the Odyssey. The opening lines of the poem, as it is printed in this item, read: “When you set out on your journey to Ithaca, pray that the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge.”
Susan Allix (b. 1943) is a bookbinder, letterpress printer, and master engraver based in London. She has created over 50 limited-edition artist’s books, some unique, since beginning her bookmaking career in 1973 with her printing of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. She has received many prestigious awards for her artist’s books, including the Judges’ Choice Award at the 2011 Oxford Fine Press Book Fair for her project Myth. Allix’s most recent project, Invisibility, was completed in Spring of 2019.
See the page for Ithaca on Allix’s website for more information.
Item #2
With 11 Prints & in the Deluxe Binding with a Murano Glass Ornament
2. ALLIX, Susan. Small Cakes. A Selection Containing Brief histories, ingredients and recipes, poetic anecdotes and visual decorations. [London:] Susan Allix, 2017.
4¼ inches by 5¼ inches. [42] ll. 3 of the leaves have been cut down into creative shapes (a trapezoid and two cupcakes). With 11 prints in total (3 carborundum prints plus hand-colored etchings and linocuts) and with additional leaves throughout printed with colorful patterns and borders. Also with paper decorations cut in the shape of cupcakes and 2 leaves embossed to resemble seashells.
Purple and beige goatskin over boards with white calf spine. Onlay in brown and wine-red goatskin as well as pink and white glazed kidskin. With a moveable miniature Murano glass cake secured to cover with a magnet. Endpapers are marbled in red-and-gold in the suminagashi style. A fine copy in a brown cloth clamshell case decorated inside and out with cut-paper onlay. $1,250
One of 18 total copies, signed and numbered by Susan Allix on the colophon. This is a special copy featuring the goatskin, calf, and glazed kid binding and the glass ornament; neither the
2 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 colophon nor Allix’s website note a limitation for the special copies. The binding designs of the special copies vary slightly: Allix states that they are “each a different flavor.”
Item #2
On her website, Susan Allix explains that the design of Small Cakes was inspired by glass miniatures and, of course, by the aesthetics of cake decoration: Allix notes that “cakes are an indulgence assembled and decorated to give pleasure to the taste and to the eye.” The book features bite-sized cakes like petit fours, ladyfingers, “Proust’s famous Madeleine,” and the Australian green sponge cakes known as “frog cakes.”
See the page for Small Cakes on Susan Allix’s website for more information.
The Golden Ass, with Surrounding Commentary by Filippo Beroaldo, A Remarkably Fine Copy in Contemporary Tooled Calf Over Oak Boards
3. APULEIUS, Lucius. Commentarii a Philippo Beroaldo Conditi in Asinum[m] Aureu[m] Lucii Apuleii. [Venice: Bartholomeum de Zanis, Nov. 11, 1504].
Folio. ff. 237 [i.e., 238 ]. Central text with surrounding commentary. Woodcut architectural border to a2v. Mostly white-on-black ornamental initials in two sizes, one quite large.
In a fine contemporary binding of tooled calf over oak boards. Two brass clasps at fore-edge, one old, one recent. Early vellum manuscript "waste" for sewing the text block. Paper spine label in manuscript, remains of old paper label on back cover. Some light worming to covers, some neat repairs to spine, filling in some lost areas of calf. The three-line title on Leaf A1 with an old dark stain. Some minor toning to text. Overall a remarkably fine copy, with the text clean and crisp.
$6,000
The text of Apuleius' Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, with the extensive commentary of Filippo Beroaldo. This is the third edition of Beroaldo's commentary, the first having appeared in 1500 (ia00938000).
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Item #3
Apuleius (c. 124-170 AD) studied Platonist philosophy at Athens. He is best known for the present work, which is he only complete Latin novel to survive into modern times. Apuleius' works appeared in six incunable editions, the first appearing in Rome in 1469.
Item #3
Filippo Beroaldo (1453-1505) was an Italian humanist who was made professor of rhetoric and poetry at the University of Bologna when only nineteen years old. He continued there until his death. He was considered the leading Italian humanist following the death of Agnolo (Angelo) Ambrogini, commonly known as Poliziano (1454-1494). He published editions of Aulus Gellius, Cicero, Juvenal, Lucan, Pliny the Elder, Suetonius, and others, with his extensive commentary. He was also known for being a very popular teacher, with up to 300 students following his lectures.
OCLC lists a dozen copies in Europe, but none in North America.
Adams A-1372. BL Italian STC, p. 35. Essling 1322. Sander 484.
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Item #4
Original Scrapbook on the First Female MP Elected in Britain
4. [ASTOR, Nancy.] An original scrapbook compiled by a follower of Nancy Astor, the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat in the United Kingdom. Materials within dated 1934-1936.
Quarto (6⅛ inches by 7¾ inches). [180] pp. Newspaper clippings, posters, and other campaign promotional items laid in or pasted down on the first [90] pp., except for on a few blank pages. The remaining pages of the scrapbook are blank. Some of the items are in color and many of the newspaper clippings include photographs. Also with a separate photograph (3” by 4¼”) of Nancy Astor on a dock laid in between pages 2 and 3.
Notebook in cloth-backed maroon boards. Some light rubbing to boards. Blue speckled edges. Some toning to materials throughout and to pages of notebook, but overall a very good, one-of-a- kind item. $2,000
Nancy Witcher Astor (1879-1964) was born in Danville, Virginia, but moved to England with her husband Waldorf Astor at the age of twenty-six. In 1919, Nancy Astor became the first woman in the United Kingdom to take her seat as a Member of Parliament. The materials in the present item chronicle Astor’s successful campaign in the general election of 1935 and offer context into the social and political climate of the United Kingdom at the time.
Many of the campaign materials included here are targeted towards women, especially mothers, and portray Astor as a hero for educational reform (pp. [20-21]) and a “champion of the nursery” (p. [16]). The materials also offer insight into the Conservative Party’s rhetoric against socialism, especially in regard to economic improvement since the Conservative Party regained control of the House of Commons from the Labor Party in 1931. One flyer reads: “The Socialist Party’s policy means dumping, depression, disaster,” (p. [8]). Overall, this scrapbook is a fascinating perspective on the public face of Nancy Astor and contemporary attitudes toward her and her campaign.
Oxford DNB.
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Item #5
One of 30 Copies from Aubergine Atelier and the Windowpane Press With 14 Original Paintings by Jodee Fenton
5. [AUBERGINE ATELIER.] YEATS, William Butler. The Second Coming (Again)…[with] Paintings by Jodee Fenton. Seattle: Aubergine Atelier, 2019.
8½ inches by 5⅝ inches. 36 ff., plus 14 Japanese kozo paper leaves painted on both sides by Jodee Fenton in gouache, tempera, watercolor, and polyacrylic varnish. Additional painted kozo paper cutouts used as accents throughout. Free endpapers are Zerkall Nideggen and pastedowns are painted kozo.
Navy goatskin over handmade recycled paper boards. Reddish-orange painted top edge. Orange and light blue handwoven silk headbands at head and tail of textblock. A fine copy, as new, housed in the light blue cloth clamshell case and with the prospectus laid in. $1,600
One of 30 copies designed by Jodee Fenton at Aubergine Atelier and printed by Bonnie Thompson Norman at the Windowpane Press. Each copy of the present book includes a unique set of fourteen paintings.
Item #5
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The Second Coming (Again) features the text of Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” with edited enjambment, new stanza breaks, and abstract paintings that encourage a new perspective on the classic poem. In the artist’s statement included in the prospectus, Fenton writes: “‘The Second Coming’ references political and economic threats of the early 20th century which were dominating the cultural, political, and social news of the time. These threats (nativism, anarchy, nationalism, and worse) were compounded by the brutality of the Great War. This poem explores these complex events and emotions and seems very relevant to what we face in the early 21st century.”
Jodee Fenton is a painter, a bookbinder, and a former president of the Book Club of Washington. She is a member of the Guild of Bookworkers, the Puget Sound Book Artists Association, and the Book Arts Guild. Fenton has pursued painting and bookmaking full-time since her recent retirement from her position as the managing librarian for special collections at the Seattle Public Library.
Item #6
With a Leaf from the 1611 First Edition of the King James Bible, One of 300 Copies Printed by the Grabhorn Press and Signed by Ed Grabhorn
6. [BIBLE IN ENGLISH.] A Leaf from the 1611 King James Bible. With “The Noblest Monument of English Prose” by John Livingston Lowes & “The Printing of the King James Bible” by Louis I. Newman. San Francisco: Printed for the Book Club of California by the Grabhorn Press, 1937. Folio. XXII pp., [2] pp. notes. Double-column text printed in black and red. Hand-illuminated initials in red, blue, yellow, and gold. With a tipped-in leaf from the first edition of the King James Bible, the 1611 “He” Bible, between pages XVI and XVII.
Quarter tan cloth over greenish-gray and cream boards with a paper label on spine printed in red- orange. Some light foxing and wear to boards and some toning to edges. A very good copy signed on the colophon by Edwin Grabhorn with the original prospectus laid in.
$600
One of 300 copies. The leaf in this copy is Aaa (Job 20-21).
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Item #6
Louis I. Newman’s essay explains that the 1611 first edition of the King James Bible is known as the “He” Bible because it contains the “unusual but correct” translation of Ruth 3:15, which reads “And he measured six measures of barley and laid it on her, and he went into the city.” Certain versions, including the Vulgate, interpreted the second clause of the sentence to mean “and she [Ruth] went into the city.” The original Hebrew, however, uses a masculine verb form to express that “he [Boaz] went into the city.” The “He” version of the clause appeared in the first edition of the King James Bible in 1611 (pp. XVII-XVIII).
Item #7
Printed by a Woman in Paris for an English Catholic Market
7. AUGUSTINE, Saint. The Meditations, Soliloquia, and Manuall of the Glorious Doctour S. Augustine …translated into English. The Seconde Edition. Paris: Printed…by Mrs Blageart, M. DC. LV. [1655.]
Twelvemo. [xix] pp., [2, blank] ff., pp. 1-181, 184-430, [2, blank] ff. Despite odd pagination, work is complete. Includes the two preliminary and two final blanks. With device on title-page and several headpieces, tailpieces, and decorative initials throughout.
Contemporary speckled calf, ruled, with four raised bands on spine. Some rubbing to extremities and chipping to head and tail of spine. Front hinge somewhat tender. Ink ownership signatures (all
8 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 eighteenth century) on front free endpaper of Mary, Viscountess Strangford; Nathaniel Darrell; and Mary Darrell. The Mary Darrell signature is repeated on title-page. Twentieth century bookplate (with engraving of Saint Augustine) laid in. Some light toning to edges and to endpapers, but overall a very good, clean copy of an uncommon book printed by a seventeenth century woman. $2,000
Second edition, as stated, though the first with Blageart’s imprint on the title-page.
Françoise Blageart (fl. 1633-1655) was a Parisian printer of at least eleven Catholic texts in English for an English recusant market. Blageart often employed false imprints, however, and the number of titles printed by her may be higher. At least seven of the books Blageart printed concerned Saint Augustine and the Augustinian Order, including a translation of Augustine’s Confessions by Sir Tobie Matthew in 1638 (Allison and Rogers, 535) and an abridged version of that translation in the same year (536). She was married to Jérome Blageart, a linguist and scholar of Arabic who also printed at least one book: Discours hapned betwene an hermite called Nicephorus & a yong lover called Tristan, a translation of Jean-Pierre Camus published in 1630. Blageart’s husband seems to have died sometime between 1630 and 1633, as her imprint appeared on a text as “the widow Blageart” for the first time in an English translation of Camus under the title The spirituall director disinteressed in 1633. The last two works known to have been printed by Blageart are the present book and Schism dis-arm’d of the defensive weapons, both bearing the date 1655.
Wing, A4212. Allison and Rogers, The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation. Smith, Grossly Material Things: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England, p. 163.
Item #8
With 18 Chromolithograph Plates
8. BOND, A[nne] L[ydia], [illustrator]. Three Gems in One Setting…The Poet’s Song, Tennyson. Field Flowers, Campbell. Pilgrim Fathers, Mrs. Hemans. London: W. Kent & Co., Paternoster Row, [1860].
Quarto. Chromolithograph title-page and 17 chromolithograph plates, three of which are decorative titles for the poems included here: “The Poet’s Song” by Alfred Tennyson, “Field Flowers” by
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Thomas Campbell, and “Pilgrim Fathers” by Felicia Dorothea Hemans. Each plate is paired with a protective blank leaf.
Original decorative purple cloth with geometric patterns stamped in gilt and in blind. Also with five sunken panels, one of which is decorated with a chromolithograph paper onlay. Spine stamped in gilt. Some fading to cloth and a bit of rubbing to joints. Expertly recased. All edges gilt. Ink gift inscription, dated 1862, from a husband to his wife on blank facing title-page. Some foxing throughout, but overall a very good, clean, and bright copy. $650
First edition.
Anne Lydia Bond (1823-1881) was a painter and photographic colorist. Her illustrations in Three Gems in One Setting were inspired by the work of Noel Humphreys and Owen Jones, as well as by the style of manuscript prayer books. Along with the present work, Bond also illustrated a printing of Tennyson’s “The Miller’s Daughter” for W. Kent in 1858. In 1879, Bond was hired by Lewis Carroll to color his nude photographs of Evelyn Hatch.
Item #9
With 15 Color Plates from “Haunting” Illustrations by E.V. Boyle (McLean), Plus an Engraved Frontispiece and 13 Head- and Tailpieces Throughout
9. [BOYLE, Eleanor Vere, illustrator.] AUSTIN, Sarah. The Story Without an End. From the German of Carové. With Illustrations printed in Colours after Drawings by E.V.B. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, Crown Buildings, 188, Fleet Street, 1874.
Quarto. vi, 40 pp. With a frontispiece in brown and 15 full-color plates each with a printed India paper interleaf. Chromolithography from wood-engraved plates by G.C. Leighton. Also with a title- page vignette; a headpiece on page 1; and a dozen tailpieces including an elaborate half-page tailpiece on page 40.
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Original red cloth with pictorial stamp in gilt and black, plus lettering in gilt. Some rubbing to gilt. Neatly recased, preserving original pale-yellow endpapers. All edges gilt. Dampstain to bottom margin of frontispiece, not touching image or text. Some offsetting from plates and some light intermittent foxing. Faint pencil signature, dated 1878, on front free endpaper. A very good, tight, and bright copy of one of the most significant feats of Victorian fantasy illustration.
$350
Third edition, with previous editions from Sampson Low in 1868 and 1872.
Eleanor Vere Boyle (1825-1916) was an art critic, essayist, and illustrator of mostly fairytales and collections of poetry. Some of Boyle’s most important and popular illustrations appear in Tennyson’s May Queen (1861); Beauty and the Beast (1875); and Ros rosarum ex horta poetarum (1885), an anthology of poems including works by Tennyson and Edward Bulwer-Lytton. McLean describes Boyle’s illustrations in The Story Without an End as “haunting”; the illustrations merge idyllic scenes of children with unsettling, surreal images of insects, rats, and dark landscapes (Victorian Book Design, p. 194). Boyle was also a skilled horticulturalist with an extensive garden that included a wide variety of roses and 20,000 snowdrops.
Item #9
Sarah Austin (1793-1867) is best remembered for Characteristics of Goethe from the German of Falk, Von Müller, and Others (1841), which she translated, edited, and annotated with important original commentary.
George Cargill Leighton (1826-1895) was a master chromolithographer whose covers for The Illustrated London Almanacks were, in McLean’s words, “among the best things of that kind of their period,” (p. 194). McLean also notes that the plates in The Story Without an End comprise some of Leighton’s most important and interesting work.
Oxford DNB. McLean, Victorian Book Design, pp. 193-194.
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Item #10
Scarce Romantic Poetry Collection Edited by a Woman
10. [CHEEK, Elizabeth, editor?] Miscellaneous Poems. Manchester: Printed at the Office of W. Shelmerdine and Co., [1800?].
Twelvemo. 144 pp., [1] errata. With a list of about 300 subscribers and with a folding table listing the traits found in people with sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic dispositions. Also with woodcut tailpieces throughout, sometimes credited to Thomas Bewick (ESTC).
Contemporary tree calf with gilt floral roll and gilt spine. Cracking to lower hinge. Front hinge a bit tender. Blue marbled endpapers with small twentieth century bookplate on front pastedown. Some toning and creasing to fore-edge of table and contemporary ink signature on verso of table. Contemporary inscription on preliminary blank reads: “Fatherhood should not have a free circulation uncontradicted.” Some light toning and some very light scattered foxing, but overall a very good, clean copy of a scarce book.
$1,500
First edition. Date from ESTC, though Jackson notes the date as 1801 in Romantic Poetry by Women. Elizabeth Cheek (1745-1805), daughter of the Methodist preacher and missionary Nicholas Mosley Cheek, is sometimes credited as the editor of this collection. We can’t confirm the attribution, though the gendered language in the preface to the present work implies that the editor was indeed a woman (pp. iii-iv). The collection includes poems by at least a few women: “a Lady” (p. 47), “Miss Ann S—” (p. 85), and others.
The table of the temperaments is a curious feature of this book: the humors don’t seem to be relevant to the poems themselves, though perhaps the table was included to supplement the author’s foreword on the nature of poetic genius (pp. v-vii). A second curious aspect is that the errata page notes that the references in “Wizard of the Rock” (pp. 23-37) to the River Derwent in
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Derbyshire, England should actually read as “Schuylkill,” seemingly referring to the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania.
ESTC lists copies of the present book at the British Library, Harvard, and the Huntington. OCLC lists additional copies at UCLA and Stanford.
Jackson, p. 70 (Collections 14).
Item #11
With a Letter from L. Maria Child to Abolitionist John Brown
11. CHILD, Lydia Maria. Correspondence Between Lydia Maria Child and Gov. Wise and Mrs. Mason, of Virginia. Boston: Published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860.
Twelvemo. 28 pp., including wrappers.
Printed self-wrappers, stitched. Wrappers loose. Uniform light toning due to paper quality, but overall a good, clean copy. $750
First edition. A New York edition was published in the same year.
The present tract compiles correspondence between Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) and Virginia Governor Henry Wise (1806-1876), plus correspondence between Child and Maria J.C. Randolph Mason (1826-1902), on the topic of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859. In her first letter, Child requests that Wise forward an enclosed letter to Brown, though the communication quickly turns to debate between Child and Wise. Child’s letter to Brown and Brown’s response are also included in the tract (pp. 14-16).
Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was a women’s rights activist and a dedicated abolitionist who authored numerous anti-slavery publications, edited Harriet Ann Jacobs’ now-classic memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), and offered protection and shelter to people fleeing slavery. Child was also a member of the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society and an editor of the society’s periodical, The National Anti-Slavery Standard.
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Item #12
“Slavery…Habituates Us to Tyranny and Oppression,” A Scarce Anti-Slavery Tract by L. Maria Child
12. CHILD, L[ydia] Maria. The Patriarchal Institution, as Described by Members of its Own Family. New York: Published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860.
Twelvemo. [1], 4-55 pp.
Printed self-wrappers. A bit of light foxing and toning to wrappers but overall a very good, clean, and sound copy of a scarce item.
$600
First edition.
The Patriarchal Institution, published during the year Abraham Lincoln was elected President, compiles quotes attesting to the unjustness of slavery and the mistreatment endured by enslaved people. Many of the quotes revolve around the physical violence enacted by slaveholders (pp. 8-18) and on the treatment of enslaved people as chattel (p. 19-24). The first two pages also include the statements of Southerners on the moral evil of slavery and its capacity to doom the future of the country. One such quote, dated 1787, reads: “Slavery is inconsistent with the genius of republicanism, and has a tendency to destroy the principles on which it is supported; as it lessens the equal rights of mankind, and habituates us to tyranny and oppression,” (p. [3]).
OCLC lists three physical copies of this item: one each at the New York Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society Library in Massachusetts, and the Huntington Library. Fifteen libraries list microform copies and many list digital copies.
Sabin 12724.
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Item #13
With a Chapter on Human Anatomy and Natural History, Including an Explanation of the Grafting of Coral Polyps
13. [CHILDREN’S BOOKS.] Juvenile Philosophy: Containing Amusing and Instructive Discourses on Hogarth’s Prints of the Industrious and Idle Apprentices; Analogy Between Plants and Animals…London: Printed by Ruffy & Evans…for Vernor and Hood…1801.
Twelvemo. [iv], 188 pp. With engraved frontispiece.
Green roan over marbled boards. Some wear to boards, as usual. Some rubbing to extremities and a bit of chipping at tail of spine. Some scraps of brown paper left behind on pastedowns from the removal of something at one time pasted down. Piece missing from upper corner of leaf B1, affecting only the page number. Foxing to frontispiece, and some light foxing to edges, but overall a very good, clean, and tight copy of an uncommon book. $450
First edition.
Juvenile Philosophy is a collection of mostly moral tales for youth, beginning with “Industry and Idleness,” in which a mother gifts the set of William Hogarth’s twelve Industry and Idleness engravings to her children. She explains the content and moral of each print to instruct her two sons on the value of hard work.
The final chapter in the present book, “Analogy Between Plants and Animals” is a surprisingly in-depth discussion of both human anatomy and natural history guided by the argument that “in all living bodies there appears a sameness of structure,” (p. 140). The discussion delves into the functions of kidneys and the liver and compares them to the structures of plants; explores the similarities and differences between blood and sap; and compares veins and arteries in animals to similar vessels in plants (pp. 142-152). A particularly interesting portion of the chapter discusses the propagation and cultivation of plants and explains the process of grafting coral polyps (pp. 177-178).
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Item #14
Miniature Naturalist Guide for Children with 11 Engraved Plates, in the Original Boards and Original Slipcase
14. [CHILDREN’S BOOKS.] Le Petit Naturaliste. Paris: Chez Marcilly [Imprimerie de A. Firmin Didot], [n.d., ca. 1820-1840].
2 ¾ inches by 2 inches. 127 pp. With 11 engraved plates of animals including a lion, a deer, a peacock, a swan, and a goldfinch. Also with an engraving of a bear climbing a tree on title-page.
Original bright green pictorial boards with engraved images of animals and a decorative border. Lettered in black on spine. All edges gilt. Extremities rubbed and some cracking to hinges. Binding thread visible at gutter. Some light foxing, but pages and plates are largely clean. Overall a very good, tight copy of a scarce book, in the original pictorial paper-covered slipcase.
$650
Item #14
First edition.
Le Petit Naturaliste contains descriptions of over 100 animals (including bears, porcupines, zebras, pigeons, and turtles) written for children. The entries detail the animals’ habitats, their physical characteristics, their diets, and other interesting facts. In addition, each animal is used to illustrate a moral virtue, like the courage of the lion (pp. 15-17) and the maternal care of the stork (pp. 87-88).
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Chez Marcilly published children’s books, mostly in miniature, in Paris during the first half of the nineteenth century. Their Petit series also included miniature reprintings of fables, songs, and poems like Le Petit Momus (1833) and Le Petit Anacreon (1831) for a juvenile audience. We could not find any information on the writer or illustrator of Le Petit Naturaliste.
Ambroise-Firmin Didot (1790-1876) was a member of the fourth generation of the hugely influential Didot publishing family. His father, Firmin Didot (1764-1836), was the inventor of stereotypography and a pioneering type designer.
OCLC lists six copies total: four in the United States (one each in Indiana, in Virginia, at Stanford, and at the Library of Congress), one in Montreal, and one at the National Library of France.
Item #15
Scarce Collection of Riddles with 40 Illustrations and an Elaborate Decorative Title-Page
15. [CHILDREN’S BOOKS.] The Temple of Fancy: or, Choice Riddles, Enigmas, Charades, and Conundrums. Calculated to Amuse the Minds of Youth. London: Whittingham and Arliss, [n.d., ca. 1816].
Twelvemo. 95 pp., [1] p. publisher’s ad. With woodcut frontispiece, elaborate decorative border on title-page, 38 different illustrated vignettes, and one tailpiece.
Original black roan over marbled boards. Gilt rule and lettering on spine. Some wear to boards and some rubbing to extremities. Some chipping to head of spine. Two ink signatures on front endpapers: one dated 1820 and the other from roughly the same time. Some light foxing and some
17 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 contemporary pencil annotations on last ten pages or so. A very good, clean, and tight copy of a scarce book. $600
Edition and date not given, though the publisher’s ad lists titles with dates of 1815 and 1816. The present book also appeared under the J. Arliss imprint, though no copies seem to bear dates. OCLC lists only four copies under the Whittingham and Arliss imprint: one in England, one in Canada, one at Yale, and one at Princeton. The copies with the J. Arliss imprint are scarcer, with OCLC listing one copy in England and one at UCLA.
Item #15
The Temple of Fancy contains 128 riddles, all in verse, with illustrations that offer clues to the riddles’ solutions. Some of the riddles are very simple, though many make reference to obscure historical events and little-known facts; the riddles also seem to progress in difficulty over the course of the book.
Item #16
With 9 Color Plates and Over 40 Text Illustrations By One of the First Female Professors at Cornell University
16. [COMSTOCK, Anna Botsford, illustrator.] SCUDDER, Samuel Hubbard. Every-Day Butterflies. A Group of Biographies…With Seventy-One Illustrations Plain and Colored. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, The Riverside Press, 1899.
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Octavo. vii, 391 pp., 12 pp. publisher’s ads. With color-printed frontispiece and eight color-printed plates (each with a printed tissue guard); plus one black-and-white plate (Plate VIII). Also with over 40 black-and-white text illustrations of butterflies throughout.
Contemporary three-quarter blue morocco over blue cloth. Spine lettered and stamped in gilt and with raised bands. Front hinge a bit tender. A bit of light rubbing to corners. Top edge gilt. Dark blue marbled endpapers. With armorial bookplate (by illustrator Edmund Henry Garrett) of stockbroker and book collector Thomas W. Lawson (1857-1925) on front free endpaper. Some light toning to margins, but overall a very clean, bright, near-fine copy.
$400
Item #16
First edition.
Anna Botsford Comstock (1854-1930) was an entomologist, wood engraver, and a scientific illustrator for the USDA Bureau of Entomology. Comstock was also a member of the third class of women to attend Cornell University and, later, one of the first female professors employed there. She often illustrated the work of her husband, the entomology professor and scientific publisher John Henry Comstock (1849-1931), including their Introduction to Entomology (1888). Comstock and her husband also collaborated on the classic textbook A Manual for the Study of Insects (1895), with Comstock taking on the role of co-author along with providing over 800 original illustrations. Her other important publications include Insect Life (1897), the identification manual How to Know the Butterflies (1904), and the popular natural history teaching guide Handbook of Nature Study (1911).
Oxford American National Biography.
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Item #17
Cook’s ‘Voyages’: The Popular Single-Volume Folio Edition
17. [COOK, James.] ANDERSON, George William, [editor]. A New, Authentic, and Complete Collection of Voyages Round the World, Undertaken and Performed by Royal Authority. Containing a New, Authentic, Entertaining, Instructive, Full, and Complete Historical Account of Captain Cook’s First, Second, and Last Voyages…In the Years 1763…1780. London: Printed for Alex. Hogg, at the Original King’s-Arms, No. 16, Pater-Noster-Row, [n.d., 1784-1786?].
Folio. A2 – 8C2 [$1 (-A1,2) signed], 182 leaves, pp. iv, 5-655. With frontispiece of Cook, a large fold- out map facing page 5, and with 156 (of 157) engraved plates. Includes sections on the voyages of Byron, Wallis, Carteret, Lord Mulgrave, Lord Anson, and Sir Francis Drake. The account of Cook’s third and last voyage begins at page 399, rather than preceding the account of Byron’s voyage, as it appears in some copies.
Late nineteenth century half morocco over textured cloth boards, ruled in gilt. Spine with six raised bands, plus rule, stamping, and lettering in gilt. Front hinge expertly strengthened. Some wear and spotting to cloth. Top edge gilt. Late nineteenth century marbled endpapers. Lacks plate facing page 142 (“Portraits of a Man and Woman of Easter Island,” numbered 36 in binder’s instructions at end of book). Plate facing 644 bound in upside-down. Plate facing page 482 torn at fore-edge, touching illustration and some text but with no loss. Small tear at top edge of plate facing page 598, touching illustration but with no loss. Creasing and wrinkling to map facing page 5. Page 165 torn at top edge, repaired with document repair tape. Some toning and offsetting, but a good, clean copy (despite lacking plate) of this extremely popular and influential edition. $3,000
The single-volume folio edition. This edition of Cook’s Voyages was originally published in eighty sixpenny issues, most of them with two engravings each, which were then gathered and released in a single-volume edition by the publishers with added front matter. The list of subscribers that appears at the end of some copies was omitted from the present by the publishers or binders,
20 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 which is not uncommon. The present item does not exactly match any state listed in Forbes’ Hawaiian National Bibliography, having distinctive traits of both states one and two. Forbes does not give priority to the first three states, though he dates copies in state four between 1790 and 1792.
Item #17
Forbes, Hawaiian National Bibliography, 61. Hill, 18 (different state). Beddie, 17-19 (the present item is in a different state than all copies listed).
Item #18
With Illustrations on Every Page and a Full-Page Map of Newcastle by the Leadenhall Press Collaborator and Longtime ‘Punch’ Contributor
18. CRAWHALL, Joseph, [illustrator and compiler]. A Beuk o’ Newcassel Sangs. Newcastle-on-Tyne: Mawson, Swan, and Morgan, 1888.
Twelvemo (5¾” by 7¾”). xi, 131 pp. With illustrations by Joseph Crawhall on nearly every page, all printed in black: headpieces, tailpieces, a full-page map of Newcastle, and numerous vignette portraits. With music and lyrics throughout.
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Original light blue paper boards, quarter buckram, with lettered and with red-and-black coat of arms on upper board. Large illustration of bridge printed in black over entire lower board. Lettered in black on spine. Some rubbing to corners. Some light toning throughout but overall a very good, very clean copy of an uncommon book. $350
Item #18
First edition.
Though Crawhall was inspired by medieval manuscript illustration, Thomas Bewick, and Japanese printmaking, his individual style and charm were well established by the time he illustrated his Beuk o’ Newcassel Sangs. In Joseph Crawhall: The Newcastle Wood Engraver, Charles S. Felver quotes a contemporary review of the Beuk that reads: “The great charm of Mr. Crawhall’s book is the character and individuality he has given to it himself. The author’s grotesque illustrations, which are unquestionably his own, which nobody has imitated, and which nobody can expect to rival, impart to the book its quality and value,” (p. 79).
Joseph Crawhall II (1821–1896) was a wood engraver from Newcastle, England whose humorous artwork often parodied and honored the culture of his home city. He began his career in illustration in 1859 with The Compleatest Angling Booke and went on to illustrate over two dozen books over the next thirty years, five of which were printed by the Leandenhall Press. Crawhall also wrote and illustrated for Punch between 1873 and 1890. Though his work often went uncredited, Felver describes his artistic contributions to Punch as “comic drawings of genius” (p. 29).
Charles S. Felver, Joseph Crawhall: The Newcastle Wood Engraver. Oxford DNB.
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Item #19
The Beautiful Caetani ‘Divine Comedy’ Manuscript, A Fine Copy of this Exquisite Facsimile
19. DANTE ALIGHIERI. Divina Commedia. [Manuscript facsimile from the Codex Caetani, dating from the latter part of the fourteenth century.] Sancasciano Val di Pesa: Stabilimento Tipografico Fratelli Stianti, 1930.
Large quarto. 497 pp. Printed on handmade paper in black, with rubrication, and large decorative initials reproduced in red and blue. Shoulder notes in Latin.
Original brown paper wrappers stamped and lettered in red and black. Wrappers slightly toned and soiled. Unopened with untrimmed edges. Light intermittent foxing throughout and a bit of foxing to edges but bright overall. Includes the pamphlet La Prima Stampa del Codice Caetani Della ‘Divina Commedia’ a Cura di Gelasio Caetani laid in. A fine, clean copy of this exquisite manuscript facsimile.
$1,500
One of 300 copies.
Not only a very important Dante manuscript, but a beautiful one that influenced the fine printing of Jenson and other Italian Renaissance printers, as well as the Ashendene Press in the twentieth century.
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Item #20
On the History of Prostitution Laws and their Evolution in the 19th Century
20. DAVIS, James Edward. Prize Essay on the Laws for the Protection of Women. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1854.
Octavo. xvi, 247 pp.
Publisher’s brown cloth stamped in blind and lettered in gilt on cover and spine. Expertly rebacked to style. A bit of rubbing to extremities. Publisher’s stamp on front free endpaper and title-page. Pencil signature dated 1891 on front free endpaper and a bit of light pencil marginalia on a few pages. A bit of foxing and toning but pages are very clean overall. A very good copy of an uncommon book. $500
First edition.
The preface to this book explains that the Associate Institution for Improving and Enforcing the Laws for the Protection of Women awarded James Edward Davis one hundred guineas (£105, or about £9,500 now) for his Essay, which details the history of laws surrounding rape, kidnapping, and prostitution. He discusses ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and Anglo- Saxon civilization, and then explains the contemporary state of the law in the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Brazil, and other countries around the world.
James Edward Davis (1817-1887) was a lawyer and legal scholar who wrote primarily on labor laws and local government. This Essay seems to be his most influential work, along with The Practice and Evidence in Actions in the County Courts (1857) and The Labour Laws (1875).
Though we could not find much information on the Associate Institution for Improving and Enforcing the Laws for the Protection of Women, the list of members included in the present book notes the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Bird Sumner (1780-1862), as well as the Archbishop of York. There do not seem to be any women listed among the members.
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Item #21
Anti-Suffrage Essays by One of the First Female Political Correspondents in Washington
21. [DODGE, Mary Abigail]. Woman’s Worth and Worthlessness. The Complement to “A New Atmosphere.” By Gail Hamilton [pseudonym]. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1872.
Octavo. 291, 8 (publisher’s ads) pp.
Publisher’s blue cloth ruled and stamped in black and gilt. Spine lettered in gilt and stamped in black. Half-inch chip in cloth at head of spine. Brown endpapers. A bit of wear and toning to cloth and some rubbing to corners. Some light toning to margins and some light foxing, mostly to edges. A very good, bright, and tight copy.
$300
First edition of Mary Abigail Dodge’s collection of anti-suffrage essays arguing that any reform in women’s lives must first occur in the home, as opposed to a more direct approach to political influence.
Mary Abigail Dodge (1833-1896) was a journalist, essayist, and one of the first women to work as a political correspondent in Washington, D.C. While Dodge believed in education and equal employment opportunities for all, she thought that suffrage would prove a burden for women, whose correct and most important role was within the home. In the preface to the present volume, she writes, “Looking but casually at Woman Suffrage, I regarded it with indifference. From a careful survey I can not regard it but with apprehension. The more closely I scrutinize it, the more formidable seems to me the revolution which it implies, the more onerous seem the duties which it imposes” (p. v).
The Feminine Companion to Literature in English, p. 301.
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Item #22
With 58 Color Plates and a Large Foldout Map; The First Edition of Emmanuel Domenech’s Most Important Work
22. DOMENECH, Em[manuel]. Seven Years Residence in the Great Deserts of North America. Illustrated with Fifty-Eight Woodcuts by A. Joliet, Three Plates of Ancient Indian Music, and a Map Showing the Actual Situation of the Indian Tribes and the Country Described by the Author. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860.
Two volumes, octavo. xxiv, [1] f. fold-out map, 445, [2] pp. publisher’s ads; xii, 465, [2] pp. publisher’s ads. With 58 color plates (33 in volume one and 25 in volume two), each with a tissue guard, from wood engravings by Auguste Joliet. Fold-out map in volume one is 21” by 17” and printed in color.
Publisher’s light brown cloth with blindstamped decorative borders and gilt lettering on spines. Some rubbing and wear to cloth at tail of volume one. Gatherings slightly loose. Dark green endpapers. Some toning to edges and margins, but overall a very good, clean set with bright and attractive plates.
$850
First edition.
Seven Years Residence in the Great Deserts of North America includes numerous illustrations of the landscape of the American West, particularly New Mexico, Texas, and the area that would later be called Arizona. In volume two, Domenech also provides a survey of the languages and customs, as he observed them, of over two dozen indigenous cultures. The illustrations in volume two include depictions of clothing, musical instruments, pottery and other decorative art pieces, and tools for fishing and hunting. Wagner-Camp notes that the plates were derived from United States Government sources and from the original illustrations of George Catlin (1796 – 1872).
Emmanuel Domenech (1825 – 1903), a French clergyman and writer, traveled throughout North America as a Catholic missionary between 1846 and 1852, during which he gathered material for his Seven Years Residence in the Great Deserts of North America. His published writings, mostly on travel and theology, included numerous texts on the American West, Mexico, and the
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Yucatán Peninsula. The present work was his most significant publication; a French translation was published in 1862.
Auguste Joliet (fl. 1860 – 1878) was a Parisian-born wood engraver, though we could not find much more information on him or his work.
Howes, D410. Sabin, 20554. Wagner-Camp, 356:1.
Item #23
Rare Hand-Colored Issue with 12 Illustrations
23. [FENWICK, Eliza.] Mary and Her Cat, In Words not exceeding Two Syllables. London: Printed for B. Tabart & Co., 1804. [Bound with:] [BALLANTINE, E.] Julia and the Pet-Lamb. London: Printed by Darton, Harvey & Co., [n.d., ca. 1813-1819.]
Twelvemo. 36 pp., [1], pp. 4-72. Mary and Her Cat is complete, with hand-colored frontispiece and 11 hand-colored half-page illustrations. Julia and the Pet-Lamb with one copper-engraved plate, but lacking frontispiece, title-page, and one plate.
Contemporary black roan, somewhat rubbed. Some toning and foxing throughout, as usual. Piece missing at the gutter of the first leaf of Julia and the Pet-Lamb, partially affecting one word. A good, tight copy. $950
First edition of the rare hand-colored issue of Mary and Her Cat, with the colophon “Printed by C. Squire.” The 1808 reprint does not have a colophon. The Dartons also published eleven reprints of Mary and Her Cat between 1814 and 1850. Julia and the Pet-Lamb appeared in four printings from the Dartons between 1813 and 1819; it is unclear which printing is included in this volume.
Eliza Jaco Fenwick (1765? – 1840) was a translator, novelist, and print colorist whose works included the epistolary novel Secresy (1795) and The Class Book: or, Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Reading
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Lessons (1806), published under the name “Rev. David Blair.” During her lifetime, Fenwick lived in England, Canada, the United States, and Barbados, where she ran a school with her daughter.
OCLC lists eight copies of Mary and Her Cat with a date of 1804: one in Canada, one in England, and six in the United States. Of the copies in the United States, only one is located west of the Mississippi (at UCLA). It is unclear how many of these copies are truly the first printing and how many are the reprint.
Julia and the Pet-Lamb is also uncommon, with only nine total copies across all printings listed on OCLC: four in England; one in Canada; and four in the United States (two in Florida, one in New Jersey, and one in New York).
For Mary and Her Cat, see The Dartons, H589. Also see Moon’s Benjamin Tabart, 40(1). For Julia and the Pet-Lamb, see The Dartons, G62.
Item #24
With Over 40 Pages of Elaborate Color Illustrations, and with Music by ‘Oz’ Composer Louis F. Gottschalk
24. GARDNER, William H. and Louis F. Gottschalk. Merry Songs for Little Folks. [with] Illustrations by Jerome P. Uhl. Philadelphia: Theodore Presser, [1906].
Quarto. 52 pp. With an illustrated title-page, plus color illustrations on pages 9-52. The illustrations are noticeably inspired by W.W. Denslow’s illustrations in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Original quarter green cloth over boards printed in black, red, and green with an illustration by Albert Hendschel. Some light dampstaining to tail edges of boards and a bit of rubbing to
28 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 extremities. Small stamp of “Graves Music Co.” on front free endpaper. Some toning to endpapers and some light offsetting from title-page, but overall a very clean and bright copy of an uncommon book. $300
Item #24
First edition. Publication date from the Cumulative Book Index (1907). Copyright date is given in the present book as 1904.
Merry Songs for Little Folks is an anthology of twenty-two children’s songs, each with a description of an accompanying dance or skit. Suggestions for costumes and props for each song are also given in a list at the beginning of the book (pp. 5-7). Most of the songs draw on the usual topics of animals and fairytales, but several are based around racial stereotypes, including “The Chinee Man” (pp. 11-13), “The Eskimo” (p. 37), and “The King of Zambesi” (pp. 44-45).
Louis Ferdinand Gottschalk (1864 – 1934) was a composer and a frequent collaborator of L. Frank Baum. Gottschalk composed the scores for several films based on Baum’s novels, including The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914) and The Magic Cloak of Oz (also 1914), as well as for the stage musical The Tik-Tok Man of Oz (1913). He also co-wrote stage musicals with Baum and was a co-founder of Baum’s Oz Film Manufacturing Company.
Jerome Phillips Uhl (1875-1951), the son of artist Silas Jerome Uhl (1842-1916), was a painter, an opera singer, and an illustrator whose work appeared in children’s books and alongside short fiction in magazines like Windsor and Everybody’s.
Lyricist William Henry Gardener (1865-1932) was a prolific composer who often collaborated with the vaudeville singer and composer Ernest R. Ball (1878-1927).
OCLC lists one copy at the British Library and seven copies in the United States.
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Item #25
Gregory the Great’s Longest and Perhaps Most Important Work, A Sourcebook for St. Thomas Aquinas and Saint Bonaventure, Handsome Incunable Edition in a Contemporary Pigskin Binding with Brass Bosses and Clasps, With Contemporary Ink Notations
25. GREGORY I, Pope. Moralia sive exposito in Job. Basel: Nicolaus Kesler, 1496].
Folio. 361 of 364 leaves, complete except for three blanks (iii6, a1, HH8), which have been excised. Text in double columns, rubricated throughout in red and blue. The decorative two-line title is from a woodcut.
Contemporary blind-tooled pigskin over oak boards. Covers with ornate panels and floral borders. With the original engraved brass bosses on corners of both covers and in centers of both covers. Brass catches, but lacking the fore-edge clasps. Spine with four ruled raised bands. Contemporary ink manuscript notes on front pastedown, occasional contemporary ink marginalia. Remains of a medieval vellum manuscript leaf, used as binder's waste, in front and back. Occasional dampstaining and other staining, especially near the end. Pin hole worming, moderate at front and back sections, but mostly absent in the middle, touching text, but with no loss of legibility. A good and interesting copy, well-suited to teaching purposes, being in its original binding, with most of its original brass fittings, with text marginalia, and with the binder’s waste evidence. $9,500
Handsome incunable edition of Gregory's (540-604, Pope from 590 to 604) moral homilies on Job, his longest and perhaps his greatest work. Gregory, also known as Saint Gregory the Great,
30 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 is credited with founding the medieval papacy and is famous for instigating the first recorded large- scale mission from Rome, the Gregorian Mission, to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons in England to Christianity.
Item #25
The present work was written between 578 and 595, begun while Gregory was at the court of Tiberius II at Constantinople, and probably finished after he returned to Rome, perhaps as early as 591. It served as a sourcebook for many of the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, including Hugh of St. Victor, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Bonaventure. The first incunable edition was published in Nuremberg in 1471. The present edition is the seventh incunable edition.
ISTC lists thirteen copies in North America.
Gofff G432. BMC III, p. 772. HC 7934. ISTC ig00432000.
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Item #26
Children’s Book Satirizing Racial and Ethnic Tensions in 1870s Brooklyn, With 12 Half-Page Chromolithograph Illustrations
26. [HARRIGAN, Edward and David Braham.] The Ten Little Mulligan Guards. New York: McLoughlin Brothers, [n.d., 1874].
10.75 inches by 9 inches. [10] ll. 12 half-page chromolithograph illustrations: 10 printed on the leaves and 2 on the interior of the wrappers.
Original stiff paper wrappers printed in color with title and illustration. Spine reinforced with archival tape. A bit of creasing to wrappers and throughout and a bit of light toning, but overall a very good copy of a fragile item. $600
Item #26
First edition.
“The Mulligan Guard” was an 1873 song and comedy sketch with lyrics by the Irish American actor and songwriter Edward Harrigan (1844-1911) and music by the composer David
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Braham (1834-1905). Harrigan and the young actor Tony Hart (1855-1891) incorporated songs like “The Mulligan Guard” into their Broadway performances like The Mulligan Guard Picnic (1878) and The Mulligan Guards’ Ball (1879). The Mulligan Guard plays satirize a neighborhood “militia” made up of Irish immigrants in the United States and is inspired by the tensions across ethnic and racial lines in Brooklyn, where Harrigan grew up and lived much of his adult life. In their Mulligan shows, Harrigan and Hart often portrayed the Irish and German immigrants who populated Brooklyn and took on the roles of racist caricatures of black people.
The Ten Little Mulligan Guards was adapted for children from Harrigan and Braham’s “The Mulligan Guard,” though OCLC notes that the music in The Ten Little Mulligan Guards is only the chorus of the original song and that the original lyrics have been replaced with new verses for children. The children’s version of “The Mulligan Guard” in the present item maintains the premise of a group of Irish Americans intending to protect their neighborhood and includes a caricature of a black man who marches with the Mulligan Guard.
The illustrator of The Ten Little Mulligan Guards is not credited in the item nor in its OCLC listing, but the illustrations may have been the work of Edward Cogger. Cogger illustrated dozens of items for the McLoughlin Brothers publishing company between about 1855 and 1900, including the “Aunt Louisa” and “Uncle Ned” picture book titles advertised on the back of the present item.
Item #27
One of 26 Copies from Heavenly Monkey, Signed by the Poet
27. [HEAVENLY MONKEY.] BUDD, Harold. Angel. [Vancouver, British Columbia: Heavenly Monkey,] 2012.
7¼ inches by 10¼ inches. [28] pp. Poems set in Perpetua italic and titles set in Monument, printed on Barcham Green Bodleian paper.
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Stiff cream-colored paper wrappers with a two-layered dust jacket: semi-transparent Japanese tissue (with printed title) over hand-marbled paper. A fine copy in the original marbled board slipcase with printed spine label.
$500
One of 26 copies printed by Rollin Milroy at Heavenly Monkey and signed by Harold Budd.
Harold Budd (b. 1936) is a poet and prolific experimental composer. Angel is his second poetry collection, preceded by Colorful Fortune, which was published by Heavenly Monkey in 2009 with illustrations by Budd. The description of Angel on the Heavenly Monkey website states that the design of the book as “unadorned and straightforward” to match Budd’s concise, uncomplicated verse.
Item #28
“The Human Hand and Mind is Visibly at Work,” One of 10 Deluxe Copies by Barbara Hodgson and Claudia Cohen, In a Special Calf Binding & with Over 80 Patterned Paper Samples
28. [HEAVENLY MONKEY.] HODGSON, Barbara and Claudia Cohen. PatternPattern: The Geometry of Motion. [Vancouver, British Columbia]: HM Editions, 2019.
Quarto, 9 inches by 9 inches. 50 pp. With 38 plates, including a leaf of wire mesh, hand-painted patterned paper, and drafting vellum leaves hand-illustrated in red and black. Includes 23 mounted paper samples decorated with patterns from sources including Japanese, Indian, and Moroccan artwork (full list of sources on p. 49). Also with a fold-out (17.5” x 13.25”) textile grid design leaf from Franz Donat’s Grosses Bindungs Lexikon (1904). All text was handpress-printed by Rollin Milroy on dampened Arches paper.
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Bound in gray calf with red-and-yellow onlay and gilt patterns. Title in gilt on spine. With hand- stenciled patterned endpapers in red and yellow. Housed in a blue-gray clamshell case with patterned paper accents and a gray calf label lettered in gilt. A blue drafting vellum portfolio with three additional textile grid leaves (all also 17.5” x 13.25”) from Donat’s Lexikon is included in the clamshell case, along with two additional blue paper portfolios (both 10” x 13”). Portfolio one contains 10 samples of patterned paper by Cohen and Hodgson; portfolio two contains 11 samples from Russian, German, and French sources, ca. 1900-1940 (sources listed on p. 51). A fine, as-new copy of a masterful production. $8,500
One of 10 deluxe copies in a special full calf binding by Claudia Cohen, with the two added portfolios of pattern prints, and signed by Barbara Hodgson and Cohen on the colophon. 20 regular copies and 6 hors commerce copies were also made.
Item #28
PatternPattern is the latest HM Editions collaboration between book artists Barbara Hodgson and Claudia Cohen, preceded by their collaborative books Cutting Paper (2013), Decorating Paper (2015), and Folding Paper (2017). The extensive bibliography and list of pattern sources included in PatternPattern (pp. 45-49) cite numerous influences from all over the world and throughout history. A post on the Heavenly Monkey Blogspot site explains that the focus of PatternPattern “is on design development, progression, and variety, emphasizing the possibilities for infinite interpretations of basic styles.” In an interview included in the same post, Hodgson explains the decision to hand-draw rather than print the illustrations in PatternPattern: “For me, there wasn’t a choice. Drawn patterns relate to the principles of design by showing, at least in part, the rationale or basis of the pattern and the sequence of its development. Here, the human hand and mind is visibly at work.”
See “The Geometry of Motion” post on the Heavenly Monkey Blogspot site (Nov. 2019).
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Item #29
One of 110 Copies from Janus Press With Elaborate Five-Foot-Long Color Panoramas
29. [JANUS PRESS.] FINE, Ruth. Four Months/Four Seasons. Newark, Vermont: Janus Press, 2009.
Four volumes, 4⅝ inches by 7½ inches. Each volume contains a large fold-out (67½” by 7½”) reduction linocut illustration by Ruth Fine, each printed in five ink colors from seven linoleum blocks. And with a colophon booklet, also 4⅝ inches by 7½ inches, that includes a printed leaf demonstrating an early state of the reduction linocut process. Papers used are Barcham Green DeWint and and specially made papers by Katie MacGregor of Whiting, Maine.
Each volume is in panorama format, bound in stiff paper wrappers with printed cover titles “January,” “April,” “July,” and “October,” and each housed in its own stiff paper slipcase. A fine set, housed together in the original wooden slipcase.
$600
One of 110 copies issued in the wooden slipcase, which was made from Baltic birch and poplar woods by Mario Messina in Lyndonville, Vermont. Four Months/Four Seasons is the first item in a series on the seasons; other sets in the series include Trio, which compiles poetry collections by Leland Kinsey, Judy Haswell, and Karen Hesse.
The colophon explains the painstaking method required to print reduction linocut illustrations: “Each of these four books is printed from seven carved linoleum blocks onto multiple sheets of paper…All sections of the seven-part image are made by a reduction linoleum cut process. This method requires that each section is partially cut from the block which is then printed, then cut again and printed again, multiple times. Following each recutting of the seven individual blocks, the newly printed ink layer adds marks and shapes to the final panorama as it maintains those already printed. For example, the second cutting and printing reveals the initial ink layer; cuts for the third
36 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 printing reveal the first and second ink layers. This continues until the desires number of colors is achieved with additional imagery contributed by every printed layer…For ‘October,’ brown was followed by coral, then yellow ochre followed by red, with orange printed last.”
Ruth Fine, a painter and printmaker educated at the Pennsylvania College of Arts, was the curator of modern prints and drawings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC between 1980 and 2002. She recently retired from her curator of special projects in modern art at the National Gallery and now works as a curator for the Art Institute of Chicago and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Item #30 (First edition)
Two Editions of an Elaborate Education Tool with Over 150 Chromolithograph Plates Each, Including Illustrations by J.C. Leyendecker in his First Commercial Art Commission
30. [LEYENDECKER, Joseph Christian and Levi Walter Yaggy, illustrators.] The Royal Scroll. [Chicago: Powers, Fowler & Lewis, 1896.]
Folio case, 17 x 16 x 2 inches. Includes the explanatory books Pen Pictures from Genesis to Revelations (64 pp.) and Bible Study in Topical Form (63 pp.), plus color maps (4 pp.) of Palestine. The interior of the case includes a large illustrated panel showing a Roman villa. With a double-sided movable scroll on rollers that is visible through two die-cut windows, cut in the illustrated panel: the upper window offers a view on 20 continual chromolithograph plates (each 9” x 7½”); the lower window shows 132 chromolithograph plates (each 4¼” x 3”), viewed three across. 60 of the plates visible through the lower window were illustrated by J.C. Leyendecker. Also with two pictorial drop-down flaps (13” x 9”), one serving as the title-page and one showing a map of locations mentioned in the Bible.
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First edition, which was followed up by at least three more (1902, 1904 and 1921). All later editions are rare, with no copies of the 1902 edition on OCLC; one copy of the 1904 edition (at North-West University in South Africa); and two copies of the 1921 edition (one in New York and one in Texas).
[with:]
[LEYENDECKER, Joseph Christian and Levi Walter Yaggy, illustrators.] The Royal Scroll. [Chicago: Powers, Higley & Co., 1902.]
Folio case, 17 x 16 x 2 inches. Same design and content as above, but with an updated illustrated panel inside showing a stage and columns (as opposed to the Roman villa).
Second edition.
Item #30 (Left: first edition; Right: second edition)
Both editions in folding wooden easel cases covered in black cloth. Wearing to cloth at extremities and some wear to joints on both cases. First edition with the original working nickel-plated clasp on top exterior flap of easel case; the clasp is present on the second edition but does not lock. Two keyholes on the side of the case can be used with the key to turn the two scrolls (the original key is included with first edition but is lacking for the second). In the second edition, there is predation to the first ten or so leaves of the Pen Pictures book and to a few leaves of the Bible Study book. The title- page is most significantly affected by the predation and is coming loose at the fore-edge. The pictorial cardboard panel covering the lower window in the second edition is detached but placed in its original position. Some light foxing to illustrations in both editions. Overall a good, bright set of two editions of this elaborate and inventive Bible education tool. $1,500
The sixty illustrations by Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874-1951) included in The Royal Scroll comprise his first commercial art commission, which he performed for the Powers Brothers Company when he was in his early twenties, shortly before enrolling in the Chicago Art Institute.
38 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
Leyendecker went on to illustrate over four hundred magazine covers and iconic advertisements for the Kellogg Company, the Boy Scouts, and the United States military. One of his most famous illustrations was of the “Arrow Collar Man” for the fashion advertisements of Cluett Peabody & Company.
Item #30 (First edition)
Levi Walter Yaggy (1848–1912) was a mapmaker, inventor, and publisher. His most popular publication was Yaggy’s Geographical Study (1887), a teaching kit similar to The Royal Scroll that included color maps, elaborate star charts, and three-dimensional models, all housed in a folding wooden case. He was made a Royal Geographical Society member for his creation of a relief map of the United States for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.
Shau, J.C. Leyendecker, pp. 14-15.
One of 200 Copies with Patterned Endpapers by Eric Carle, Signed and Numbered by Author Chris Loker
31. LOKER, Chris [compiler]. A Shimmer of Joy: One Hundred Children’s Picture Books in America. With Contributions by Cathryn M. Mercier, Joel Silver, & Michael F. Suarez. San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 2019.
Quarto. 329 pp. With half-title, title-page, and page headings throughout printed in in green and blue. With dozens of color reproductions of cover art and illustrations from children’s books throughout.
39 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
Red cloth boards lettered in gilt. Red and orange striped decorative endpapers photo-reproduced from hand-painted paper by Eric Carle, author and illustrator of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. A fine copy, as new. $295
First edition. One of 200 copies bound in cloth and with the Eric Carle decorative endpapers. Also signed on the colophon by Chris Loker. A special edition of 50 was also produced.
Item #31
Chris Loker is a children’s book author, a bibliographer, and a former member of the board of the Book Club of California. She currently serves on the boards of the Grolier Club, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, and the Rare Book School in Charlottesville, Virginia. Loker is also the author of One Hundred Books Famous in Children’s Literature, published by the Grolier Club in 2014. In her introduction to the present book, Loker writes about the value of children’s books: “Today’s contemporary picture book is a bravura art form that brims with literary, artistic, and theatrical creativity…Most of all, the picture book often contains that brilliant, unexpected spark of personal thrill that can enliven our hearts, one reader at a time, allowing millions to experience moments of shimmering joy,” (p. 14).
Early Edition of Marcet’s ‘Conversations on Chemistry’ Updated with a New Chapter on Electrochemistry and an Extra Plate
32. [MARCET, Jane Haldimand.] Conversations on Chemistry; in which the Elements of that Science are Familiarly Explained and Illustrated. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809
Two volumes, twelvemo. xviii, 347 pp.; xii, 363, [9, index] pp. With 12 plates total (10 plates in volume one and two plates in volume two), all from original drawings by Marcet.
Contemporary half calf over marbled boards with gilt-lettered spine. Front hinges tender. Some rubbing to extremities. Marbled edges. Half-title included in volume two, none called for in volume one. Foxing to endpapers, and some foxing and toning throughout, as usual. Twentieth-century
40 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 bookplates on front pastedowns. Two ink signatures of “Harriett Fortescue,” both dated 1810, on front free endpapers. An important, uncommon set, in very good condition. $750
Item #32
Third edition, “revised, corrected, and considerably enlarged.” The preface, in volume one, notes that it has been updated to include “brilliant discoveries in electro-chemical science” (p. v), which are detailed in the new chapter “On the Chemical Agencies of Electricity” (pp. 143-164), likely appearing for the first time in this edition with an additional plate. The first edition, which was published anonymously in 1805, is a legendary rarity with no copies noted on OCLC. The 1806 London edition is also uncommon, with 15 copies in OCLC, only 8 of which are in North America.
Item #32
Jane Haldimand Marcet’s Conversations on Chemistry was one of the first elementary science textbooks. Though it was initially intended for young women, its popularity grew and it was incorporated into courses on science and medicine all over the world. One of the young people inspired by Conversations on Chemistry was Michael Faraday (1791-1867), who was introduced to electrochemistry by the book and went on to innovate the foundational technology for electric motors. Faraday and Marcet eventually became friends, and Marcet incorporated Faraday’s work into later editions of the book. Marcet continued to update Conversations on Chemistry until the age of eighty-four, at which point it had gone through sixteen editions in England. The book also appeared in over twenty editions in the United States and in several French translations.
Oxford DNB.
41 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
Item #33
Scarce Work on Frederick Fröbel by a German Noblewoman and Educator – With 6 Plates, an Engraved Frontispiece, and a Decorative Half-Title
33. [MARENHOLTZ-BÜLOW, Bertha von.] Woman’s Educational Mission: Being an Explanation of Frederick Fröbel’s System of Infant Gardens. London: Darton & Co., Holborn Hill, 1855.
Octavo. iv, 88 pp. With 6 engraved plates of children at play, plus an engraved frontispiece and an elaborate decorative half-title.
Publisher’s red cloth blindstamped and lettered in gilt. Some fading to cloth. Dark purple endpapers. Some toning to edges and some light offsetting from plates, but overall very clean throughout. A very good copy of a scarce item.
$1,500
First English edition of Marenholtz-Bülow’s Woman’s Educational Mission, translated and with a preface by Elizabeth Krockow von Wickerau. The present book also seems to be the earliest English translation of any work by Marenholtz-Bülow.
Baroness Bertha von Marenholtz-Bülow (1810 -1893) was a German educator who wrote extensively on Frederick Fröbel. Marenholtz-Bülow’s writings were translated into English by a variety of female translators, including Mary Tyler Peabody Mann (1806-1887), an important educator and the wife of Horace Mann. English translations of both Marenholtz-Bülow’s The New Education by Work and her Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel were published by Mary Tyler Peabody Mann in 1876 and 1877, respectively.
42 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
Item #33
Countess Elizabeth Krockow von Wickerau was a German noblewoman. She identifies her surname in the translator’s preface of the present item as “von Wickerode,” which seems to be an alternate or Anglicized spelling. We could not find any additional information about von Wickerau; this translation of Woman’s Educational Mission seems to be her only published work.
OCLC lists no copies of the present item in the United States and only six copies overall (four in England, one in Scotland, and one in Canada).
One of 250 Copies from Midnight Paper Sales with 7 Color Wood Engravings by Gaylord Schanilec
34. [MIDNIGHT PAPER SALES.] GOODMAN, Richard. Bicycle Diaries: One New Yorker’s Journey Through 9-11. Impressions Ten Years Later [by] Gaylord Schanilec. [n.p., Wisconsin:] Midnight Paper Sales, 2011.
Octavo. 107 pp. With seven wood engravings in color (including two two-page spreads of New York cityscapes) from photos by Gaylord Schanilec. Title-page printed in teal and black.
Hand-bound in brown glossy cloth at the Campbell-Logan Bindery in Minnesota. With pictorial, printed paper onlay on front cover and printed label on spine. A fine copy.
$350
One of 250 numbered copies, signed by Richard Goodman and Gaylord Schanilec. 26 lettered deluxe copies in goatskin over handmade paper were also produced.
43 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
Item #34
In the foreword to the present work, Richard Goodman (b. 1945) writes: “Shortly after September 11th, I began riding my bicycle down from my apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to the World Trade Center disaster site…I rode almost every day, in all weather, for three months. When I came home, I wrote about what I saw,” (p. 7).
Item #34
Midnight Paper Sales was founded in 1987 by wood engraver, printer, and poet Gaylord Schanilec (b. 1955). In the last three decades, Schanilec has produced nineteen books and over twenty broadsides, which include poems by Joyce Carol Oates, Saadi Yousef, Robert Bly, and Gregory Orr. Schanilec’s most extensive project to date has been Lac Des Pleurs: Report from Lake Pepin, which is described on his website as a “seven-year odyssey” of photography, wood engraving, commentary, and typography that culminated in 2015. Bokeh: A Little Book of Flowers, the most recent Midnight Paper Sales book project, will be released in the spring of 2020.
44 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
Item #35
The First Edition of T.L. Mitchell’s ‘Expeditions’ With Numerous Hand-Colored Illustrations and Several Fold-Out Plates
35. MITCHELL, T[homas] L[ivingstone]. Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, With Descriptions of the Recently Explored Region of Australia Felix, and the Present Colony of New South Wales. London: T&W Boone, New Bond Street, 1838.
Two volumes, octavo. xxi, [3], 351 pp; viii, [2], 406 pp. With hand-colored frontispiece and title-page vignette in volume one, plus 20 plates and 11 text illustrations. Also with frontispiece in volume two, title-page vignette, and 26 plates (five of which are hand-colored). Plates 22 and 23 in volume two are hand-colored fold-out maps (8¼” by 12¼”) and plate 39 is a fold-out landscape illustration (8¼” by 14½”). Lacks plate 26 (in volume two) and includes two copies of plate 23. All 48 of the plates are lithographs from original illustrations by T.L. Mitchell. Plate 42, facing page 189 in volume two, was engraved by Alfred Robert Freebairn using the recently innovated “anaglyptograph” method.
Contemporary half sheep over purple cloth boards. Spines with raised bands, ruled and decorated in blind, with red morocco labels lettered in gilt. Some rubbing to spines and extremities. Front hinges expertly repaired. Marbled edges. Twentieth century bookplate on front pastedowns of both volumes. Volume one lacks the map facing the blank 344 (map is not included in the plate count given in the table of contents). Some foxing to frontispiece and title-page in volume one, and a bit of foxing to plates in that volume, but a good, clean set despite the lacking plate.
$1,250
First edition.
Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia collects the illustrated logs of Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell (1792–1855), who conducted surveying expeditions in New South Wales and Victoria in 1831, 1835, and 1836.
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Item #35
The present set includes meteorological tables, descriptions of his encounters with Aboriginal people, a vocabulary comparing various Aboriginal languages, and numerous topographic maps. The Oxford DNB describes Livingstone’s work surveying Australia as “immense, and unequalled by any before or after him.”
The Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages, 1165. Oxford DNB.
Advocating for Quaker Ideals in Children’s Education by the Seneca Falls Convention Chair and Husband of Lucretia Mott
36. MOTT, James. Observations on the Education of Children; and Hints to Young People on the Duties of Civil Life. New York: Printed by Samuel Wood & Sons, 1816.
Twelvemo. [34] pp. Paginated [1-2], 3-18, 13-20, 19-28. Despite odd pagination, work is complete, though with a few repeated pages.
Disbound, with traces of paper wrappers at spine. Foxing and toning throughout. Margins trimmed a bit close, with most of a line of text missing from bottom of page 27 and part of a few words missing on bottom of page 28, though the text on page 28 is still legible. With a contemporary ink signature of “Henry Mott” on terminal blank. A good, sound copy of a fragile item.
$300 First edition.
Education of Children explains to parents the importance of modeling virtue, peace, and moderation to their children. Mott condemns harsh treatment of children in an attempt to gain their respect and instead proposes rational communication, arguing that “when a child is capable of being reasoned with, it ought certainly to be treated as a rational creature,” (p. 2). Along with advocating
46 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 for virtuous behavior on the part of parents to provide a positive example for children, Mott draws on traditional Quaker ideals of simplicity and argues that children should not be spoiled with “finery of dress” and rich food, “for thereby the idea of happiness becomes associated with the gratification of the sensual appetite,” (p. 13).
Educator James Mott (1788 – 1868) was the chair of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, where his wife, Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793 – 1880), was the lead speaker. James Mott also wrote tracts on abolitionism, his advocacy for teetotalism, and his opposition to war on the grounds of his Quaker beliefs. The Motts were early supporters of Swarthmore College; Lucretia Mott and Swarthmore co-founder Martha Ellicott Tyson (1795–1873) were among the women who successfully advocated that Swarthmore should be coeducational.
We could not confirm that the signature in the present item of “Henry Mott” belongs to a relative of the author, though a connection is certainly possible, as James Mott grew up in a large family with six siblings.
Item #37
With 55 Photographs from Illustrations by Female USDA Botanists
37. [MUSIL, Albina Frances, Regina Olson Hughes, Helen H. Henry, and Fred Hebard Hillman, botanists and illustrators]. [Album of 55 photographs of seed samples drawn by women, plus mimeographed reports and descriptions of the photographs.] Beltsville, Maryland: United States Department of Agriculture…[1944-1949].
9½ inches by 11¼ inches. 44 manila paper leaves. With 55 mounted silver gelatin photographs from illustrations of seed samples by botanists Helen H. Henry, Albina Frances Musil, and Regina Olson Hughes. Each leaf of photographs features images of two to 24 seed samples. Also with 21
47 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 typewritten pages listing and describing the samples shown in each of the photographs. Plus 9 mimeographed United States Department of Agriculture reports by Musil (dated 1944-1949) with maps and text illustrations, each between one and nine pages. Seven of the reports are mounted and three have been laid in.
Contemporary black pebbled cloth three-ring binder. Corners a bit rubbed. A few of the photographs are coming loose from the manila leaves. Contemporary annotations (in two hands, one in blue ink and one in pencil) to the margins of some of the typewritten descriptions, adding details (such as physical descriptors and the families of the plants listed) to the brief descriptions. A bit of toning to the mimeographed reports, and some faint toning to the edges of the photographs, but overall a very good, very clean one-of-a-kind collection of fascinating and attractive illustrations and detailed botanical reports by three important female botanists.
$1,250
Item #37
The present collection represents work performed by Musil, Henry, and Hughes (with Hillman credited only once, in the index to the first 15 plates) for the United States Department of Agriculture Seed Testing Laboratories, under the auspices of the Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering. The photographs and reports collected here focus mostly on forage crops and feed for livestock, particularly legumes, herbs, wildflowers, grasses, and wheat.
Albina Frances Musil (1894-1979) was a Czech-American botanist who spent most of her career employed by the USDA as a botanist and illustrator. The reports collected here identify her as an employee of the Division of Forage Crops and Diseases, first as an assistant and then as an associate botanist.
After graduating from Gallaudet College, Regina Olson Hughes (1895-1993) began working for the USDA as a botanical illustrator and a translator of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian for scientific papers. Hughes’ extremely detailed and precise illustrations are still highly prized, and in 1982 she became the first deaf artist to have a solo exhibition of their work at the Smithsonian.
48 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
Item #37
Helen H. Henry (fl. 1916-1950) worked as an assistant botanist for the USDA under the noted botanist Charles V. Piper (1867-1926). Her work centered around agricultural engineering and forage crops.
List of Workers in Subjects Pertaining to Agriculture and Home Economics, pp. 22-23 (USDA, 1919). Rechcigl, Notable American Women with Czechoslovak Roots: A Bibliography (2019). Gannon, Deaf Heritage, pp. 120-122 (Gallaudet University Press, 2012).
With 6 Mounted Color Photographs from Engravings by the Author, One of 70 Copies from Carolee Campbell’s Ninja Press
38. [NINJA PRESS.] SCHANILEC, Gaylord. Departures. [Sherman Oaks:] Ninja Press, 2019.
Quarto. [12] ff. With six mounted full-color photographs by Carolee Campbell of wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec. Photographs were printed digitally on Japanese Nyodo-shi paper. Text was letterpress printed from entirely hand-set type on Langley paper handmade in England in 1986. With small triangular text ornaments in red and black throughout.
Handmade Belgian flax paper wrappers stitched with silver thread and decorated with a mounted color photograph. Edges untrimmed. A fine copy, as new, signed in pencil on the colophon by Gaylord Shanilec. $575
One of 70 copies designed, printed, and bound by Carolee Campbell with assistance from Farida Baldonado Sunada of the Ophelia Press. Text was printed by Gaylord Schanilec at his press, Midnight Paper Sales, in Wisconsin. Eight additional hors commerce copies were also produced.
49 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
Item #38
The photographs in Departures depict engravings that first appeared in Lac Des Pleurs: Report from Lake Pepin, a 2015 artist’s book written and illustrated by Gaylord Schanilec (b. 1955). The engravings in Lac Des Pleurs were based on illustrations in Aldus Manutius’ Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.
Since 1984, letterpress printer and book artist Carolee Campbell (b. 1936) has been producing books and broadsides at her Ninja Press. Campbell has printed the work of numerous contemporary poets, including former United States Poets Laureate W.S. Merwin, Billy Collins, Philip Levine, and Natasha Trethewey. Campbell lives in Sherman Oaks, California.
Item #39
Scarce Collection of Perrault Fairytales with 14 Color-Printed Plates
39. PERRAULT, Charles. Contes des fées. Paris: Chez Le Fuel, Libraire, [n.d., ca. 1820].
Oblong octavo. 258 pp. With frontispiece, title-page vignette, and 12 plates, all printed in color. Illustrations were stipple-engraved by Noël Jeune after designs by Sébastien Leroy.
50 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
Original pink boards with gilt border of grapevines and gilt rule. Gilt spine and all edges gilt. Small twentieth-century bookplate of book collector and librarian Albert A. Howard (d. 2017) on lower pastedown. Some foxing and a bit of toning throughout, but overall a very good, bright, and attractive copy. $2,500
Item #39
No date or edition indicated in the present item, though Princeton notes a date of circa 1820. Aside from the Princeton copy, OCLC also lists six copies outside of the United States: one copy at the Bibliothèque Nationale of France, two in Germany, one at Oxford, and one at the Toronto Public Library.
Contes des fées is a collection of twelve of Charles Perrault’s classic fairytales, presented in a combination of prose and verse: “Le Petit chaperon rouge,” “Les fées,” “La Barbe bleue,” “La Belle au bois dormant,” “Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté,” “Cendrillon,” “Riquet à la houpe,” “Le petite Poucet,” “L’Adroite princess, ou Les aventures de Finette,” “Peau d’âne,” and “Les souhaits ridicules.” A preliminary “Avis sur les ouvrages de Charles Perrault” is also included (pp. 3-6).
Gumuchian, Les Livres de l’Enfance, 4425.
One of 175 Copies from the Plantin Press – Scarce & in Fine Condition
40. [PLANTIN PRESS.] MENUHIN, Yehudi. Bartók. A Memoir. [Los Angeles: Printed by Saul Marks at the Plantin Press for Lawrence Clark Powell and Yehudi Menuhin, 1973].
Small octavo, 5 ½ inches by 8 ¼ inches. [iv], 7 pp. With a full-page woodcut by Mary Kuper of the Plantin Press on page [iii].
Light blue paper wrappers with title and pattern in brown. Stitched with cream colored thread. A bright, clean, and fine copy of an attractive Plantin Press item that is scarce in commerce.
$250 One of 175 copies.
51 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
Item #40
The colophon explains that Lawrence Clark Powell commissioned Saul and Lillian Marks to reprint this passage from Theme and Variations, a 1972 memoir by the violinist Yehudi Menuhin (1916 – 1999). Powell was a fan of the memoir and of Menuhin’s work, which included important performances of the compositions of Béla Bartók.
Harmsen and Tabor, The Plantin Press, 379.
Item #41
One of 250 Copies Beautifully Printed by the Plantin Press With 8 Plates and Decorative Initials in Color Throughout
41. [PLANTIN PRESS.] PAGE, James R. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Book of Common Prayer and Related Materials in the Collection of James R. Page. Los Angeles: [The Plantin Press,] 1955.
Quarto. 67 pp. With 8 plates, including fold-out 16” by 11½” reproduction of Queen Elizabeth’s 1573 Proclamation enforcing the Order of the Observance of the Book of Common Prayer. Title- page printed in red and black with elaborate architectural woodcut border. Also with decorative
52 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 initials and side-notes in red throughout, plus a printed facsimile of Elizabeth’s signature in red on page 65. Printed on handmade paper.
Blue-gray printed boards with red title and decorative border and white paper spine titled in red. A bit of toning to edges of leaves but otherwise a fine copy of this masterful Plantin Press item in the original printed dust jacket. $375
One of 250 copies printed by Saul and Lillian Marks of this catalogue compiled by Dorothy Bowen. Seven of the plates in the present item appeared previously in the exhibition catalogue for the James R. Page collection of the Book of Common Prayer at the Huntington in June 1953, which was printed and bound in paper wrappers at the Plantin Press. The present item is a much more extensive version of the earlier catalogue, with the added fold-out plate.
James Rathwell Page (1884 – 1962) was a book collector, the Chairman of the Board of the California Institute of Technology, and a frequent collaborator with Southern California printers like Saul and Lillian Marks, Ward Ritchie, and Grant Dahlstrom. In the “Postscript” to his Descriptive Catalogue, Page explains that his collection of the Book of Common Prayer was inspired by his lifelong commitment to the Protestant Episcopal Church, along with the artistry and craft of the books catalogued here. He also notes a “pleasant and contentious relationship” with Leslie Bliss, Carey Bliss, and bibliographer Dorothy Bowen.
Harmsen and Tabor, The Plantin Press, #121. See #104 for the catalogue in wrappers.
Item #42
One of 575 Deluxe Copies Signed by Arthur Rackham with 16 Color Plates and 24 Elaborate Illustrated Vignettes
42. RACKHAM, Arthur [illustrator]. Some British Ballads. London: Constable & Co., [n.d., 1919].
Quarto. [10] pp., 170 pp. With mounted frontispiece and 15 mounted plates (each with a printed tissue guard). Also with 24 illustrated vignettes and with text ornaments of eagles, snakes, dragons, and other animals and mythological creatures.
53 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
Original quarter vellum cream boards ruled in gilt with elaborate gilt pictorial stamping. Spine stamped and lettered in gilt. Top edge gilt. Endpapers toned. Ink signature dated Christmas 1919 on front pastedown. A bit of light toning to edges but overall a very good, very bright copy, with beautiful illustrations throughout. $1,500
Item #42
One of 575 deluxe copies signed and numbered by Arthur Rackham.
Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) remains one of the most widely celebrated illustrators of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He was best known for his illustrations in Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle (Heinemann, 1905) and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (Hodder and Stoughton, 1906). Rackham was also a member of the Societe Nationale de Beaux Arts and a Master of the Art Worker’s Guild.
Lattimore and Haskell, #50.
Rare Toy Books Featuring Jessie Willcox Smith’s ‘Mother Goose’ Illustrations
43. [SMITH, Jessie Willcox, illustrator and compiler.] Mother Goose Melodies Toybooks. [New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1914.]
10 booklets, 5 ¼ inches by 3 ½ inches. 8 pp. each. With 4 black-and-white illustrations in each booklet to accompany the rhymes.
Original stiff paper wrappers, each with a color reproduction of a different plate from The Jessie Willcox Smith Mother Goose. With gilt border and lettering. Rear cover printed with an advertisement for Colgate talcum powder. Some creasing to pages and wrappers and some toning throughout the
54 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 set. Open tear at fore-edge of page 3 in the Little Miss Muffet booklet (with no text or images affected). Overall a very good, clean, and attractive set. $450
The Jessie Willcox Smith Mother Goose was first published by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1914. There are no previous editions of these Toybooks, which were published in a set of twelve. The titles included here are Little Miss Muffet Sat on a Tuffet; Rain, Rain Go Away; Little Bo-peep; Mary, Mary Quite Contrary; Ring a-round a Rosie; See Saw, Margery Daw; Curly Locks, Curly Locks, Wilt Thou Be Mine?; One Foot Up, the other Foot Down; Hush-a-bye-Baby On the Tree Top; and Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill. The two missing titles are There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater.
Item #43
Jessie Willcox Smith (1863 – 1935) was one of the most important illustrators of children’s books during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the second woman inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame. She was a regular contributor of illustrations to the magazines Century, Scribner’s, Harper’s, and was, along with Maxfield Parrish, one of the seven leading artists contracted to work exclusively for Collier’s in 1905. Smith illustrated every printed cover of Good Housekeeping between 1917 and 1933 and originally released black-and-white versions of many of her Mother Goose illustrations in the magazine. Aside from her Mother Goose illustrations, some of her best-known work includes her illustrations for a 1915 edition of Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies and editions of several Charles Dickens novels.
This is a rare set. There are only seven of these titles listed on OCLC and no more than three copies of each. The only significant holding for these toy books noted on OCLC is Princeton’s set of seven titles.
Nudelman, Jessie Willcox Smith: A Bibliography, A40.
55 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020
Item #44
By the First Woman to Completely Translate the Bible into English
44. SMITH, Julia E[velina] and Hannah H[adassah]. Selections from the Poems of Mrs. Hannah H. Smith, by her Daughter, Julia E. Smith, the Only Survivor of the Family. Hartford, Conn: Press of the Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1881.
Twelvemo. [7] pp., pp. 6-55.
Publisher’s purple cloth lettered in gilt (cover title: Mother’s Poems). Some rubbing to spine and a bit of soiling to cloth. Green endpapers. Front free endpaper coming loose. Contemporary pencil signature on preliminary blank and a second pencil signature on front free endpaper of “Pamela Hale,” possibly the Washington State businesswoman and educator Pamela Case Hale (1834-1915). A bit of foxing and some light toning to pages, but overall a very good, clean, and tight copy of a rare book edited by the first woman to completely translate the Bible into English. $2,500
First edition of this rare work by Julia Evelina Smith (1792-1886), a suffragist and the first woman to publish her own complete translation of the Bible. Julia’s sister, the suffragist Abby Hadassah Smith (1797-1879), was the original collector of the poems, which were written by their mother Hannah Hadassah Smith (1767–1850). Some of the poems collected here were written by Hannah in Italian and translated by Julia.
In 1876, Julia and Abby Smith independently funded the publication of their edition of the Bible, which Julia had translated over the course of eight years with a particular attention toward literalism. The edition was significant in part because it was one of the most easily accessible contemporary Bible translations in English until the publication of the British Revised Version in 1881; it now remains a milestone in women’s history.
According to Julia’s introduction to the present work, Hannah was an astronomy enthusiast who was well-versed in Latin, French, and Italian. Most of the poems are in response to psalms and
56 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 books of the Bible, and several, including “To Julia” (pp. 31-32), include Scottish slang that reflects the roots of the family and their involvement in the Sandemanian sect of the Church of Scotland. The present book offers a perspective on the later work of Julia E. Smith, as well as on her relationships and collaboration with her family. All the women of the Smith family, including Abby and Julia’s three older sisters, were inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994 for their commitment to suffrage, women’s education, and abolitionism.
OCLC lists one physical copy of this work (at Yale).
Children’s Guide to Physics, Astronomy, and More with Copper-Engraved Illustrations and Plates
45. TELESCOPE, Tom. [Goldsmith, Oliver and John Newbery.] The Newtonian System of Philosophy, Explained by Familiar Objects, in an Entertaining Manner, for the Use of Young Persons. London: Printed for Ogilvy and Son; Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme; J. Walker; Lackington, Allen, and Co. and Darton and Harvey, 1806.
18mo. vii, 136 pp. With copper-engraved frontispiece and illustrations in text throughout of globes, an orrery, and a diagram of the solar system. Includes three copper engraved plates: two between pages 20 and 21 and one between pages 28 and 29. The appendix, pages 125 to 136, includes 4 full- page engravings that are unnumbered but included in the pagination.
Contemporary green roan spine and marbled paper boards. All edges speckled blue. Some light rubbing to extremities. A bit of toning to margins and endpapers but overall very clean. Bottom corner of M5 torn with a piece missing, not affecting text. A very good copy. $750
Item #45
“A new improved edition, With many Alterations and Additions, to explain the late new Philosophical Discoveries.” The book was originally published in 1761. Some of the “alterations and
57 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 additions” include the edit to the plate of an orrery between pages 20 and 21, to which the newly discovered moons of Saturn and Uranus (called “Georgian” at the time) were added.
The Newtonian System of Philosophy is divided into six chapters: one “On Matter and Motion,” two on astronomy, two on nature, and one on “the Five Senses of Man, and of his Understanding” (pp. iii-vii). The appendix provides illustrations and descriptions of tools for drawing maps and diagramming scientific concepts. Each chapter is framed as a lecture given to a group of young people by “Tom Telescope.” These lectures are very detailed and sometimes creative and digressive, with jokes, extended anecdotes, and even a lengthy quote from King Lear (pp. 66-67).
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), author of The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and the hugely influential children’s book publisher John Newbery (1713-1767) are credited with the joint writing and editing of the present book.
Item #46
Finely Printed by Ibarra, with 17 Plates and a Fold-Out Facsimile of a Letter from Isabella of Spain
46. TERREROS Y PANDO, Esteban de. Paleografía Española, Que contiene todos los modos conocidos, que ha habido de escribir en España, desde su principio, y fundacion, hasta el presente, á fin de facilitar el registro de los Archivos, y lectura de los manuscritos, y pertenencias de cada particular; juntamente con una historia sucinta del idioma comun de Castilla…Madrid: Joachin Ibarra, 1758.
Small octavo. [4] pp., 160 pp. With [18] plates, one of which folds out to an 8” by 11.75” facsimile of a letter from Isabel I of Castile to Gómez Manrique (1412-1490) while he was Corregidor of Toledo. The plates show Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek text in a variety of calligraphic styles.
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Contemporary limp vellum titled on spine. Some wear to top edge of front cover and some soiling to vellum, including a small red stain at bottom edge of front cover, probably paint. Some light foxing, but pages are mostly bright throughout. A very good, clean copy of this handsome Ibarra printing.
$1,750 First edition.
This work tracks Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish influence on language in Spain, as well as the influences of North African populations, the Roman Empire, and classical Greek society. It includes analyses of the way Castilian Spanish, Galician, Catalan, and other languages and dialects in Spain influenced each other and developed in tandem.
Esteban de Terreros y Pando (1707-1782) was a Spanish Jesuit who taught rhetoric and mathematics. Among his other works is a four-volume dictionary of Castilian Spanish, also published by Ibarra.
Lasalla 55. Palau 330662.
Item #47
By the Female Novelist and Medical Doctor Margaret G. Todd, A Near-Fine Copy in the Original Dust Jacket
47. TRAVERS, Graham. Windyhaugh. A Novel by Graham Travers (Margaret G. Todd, M.D.). New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1899.
Octavo. vi pp., 418 pp., [8] pp. publisher’s ads.
Publisher’s pictorial light green cloth with silver and dark blue design and gilt lettering, very bright and attractive. Binding slightly shaken. Some light toning but overall pages are clean. Ink signature
59 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 of “E.W. Beck” and small numerical library stamp on front free endpaper. A lovely, near-fine copy in a good original dust jacket. $300
First United States edition. Published in London and Edinburgh in 1898.
The present book tells the story of a young woman, Wilhelmina Galbraith, who grows up alone with her grandmother on a Scottish estate called Windyhaugh. A contemporary advertisement of this book, published in Blackwood’s Magazine and reprinted in several other D. Appleton books at the time, describes Windyhaugh as a “careful and penetrating analysis of the evolution of a woman’s mind” and that “every character is limned with a conscientious care that bespeaks the true artist…Windyhaugh compels admiration for its brilliancy of style.”
Margaret G. Todd (1859-1918), who wrote under the name Graham Travers, was a writer and medical doctor. She coined the term “isotope” in 1913 in correspondence with her friend Frederick Soddy, the Nobel Prize winning chemist. Todd wrote several popular novels; a collection of short stories titled Fellow Travellers (1896); and a biography of her partner, the doctor and activist Sophia Jex-Blake, with whom Todd lived for almost twenty years. Todd was also a doctor at Edinburgh Hospital and advocate for the rights of women working in the medical field.
Item #48
With 13 Full-Page Illustrations – One of 125 Signed Copies from the Turkey Press
48. [TURKEY PRESS.] HANNON, Michael and William T. Wiley. Fables. Poems by Michael Hannon. Drawings by William T. Wiley. Isla Vista, California: Turkey Press, [1988].
9 inches by 13 inches. 60 unnumbered pp. Frontispiece and 13 full-page illustrations relief printed from photoengraved plates on kozo paper handmade at Fuji Paper Mills Cooperative in Japan. Includes prospectus from Turkey Press.
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Split-board binding with terra cotta-colored handmade Japanese kakishibu paper over boards and a black linen spine. Title blindstamped on front cover. Edges untrimmed. Enclosed in a terra cotta cloth-covered clamshell case and titled in black on spine. A fine copy.
$750
Item #48
One of 125 copies signed by the poet and artist. The 13 short poems in Fables include “What the Crow Said” and “What the God Said.” The full text of the former reads as follows: “Though friendly to magic I am not a man disguised as a crow.
I am night eating the sun.”
Michael Hannon (b. 1939) is the writer of over thirty-five chapbooks and full-length collections of poetry and is a frequent collaborator of the illustrator and Guggenheim Fellow William T. Wiley (b. 1937). Their numerous collaborative works include the artist’s books Lyrica (2008) and Time Being (Tangram, 2004) and the broadsides Love Poem (1997) and The Goddess (1998).
Since 1974, the Turkey Press has been owned and operated by book artists Harry Reese and Sandra Liddell Reese out of their home and studios in Isla Vista, California. Aside from Hannon and Wiley, the press has also collaborated with artists and writers like Antonio Frasconi, Kiki Smith, and Yoko Ono.
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Item #49
‘Huckleberry Finn’ First Edition, Early Issue – Very Clean and Bright
49. TWAIN, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). With One Hundred and Seventy-Four Illustrations. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885.
Octavo. 366 pp. Illustrations by E.W. Kemble.
Original green pictorial cloth stamped in gilt and black. Some rubbing to spine and extremities and some minor toning (as usual), but overall very clean. A small newspaper clipping, as well as a slip of paper discussing issue points are pasted down on front free endpaper. Illustration on page 143 has been lightly colored in with blue pencil. Overall a very good, very bright copy. In a custom clamshell case with green morocco spine.
$8,500
First American edition, early issue. With the following issue points: “was” for “saw” on page 57; illustration “Him and another Man” incorrectly listed as at page 88; the second “5” on page 155 is missing; page 283 is a cancel; title leaf is a cancel; and frontispiece is in state 2.
BAL #3415. Johnson, p. 43. Grolier 100 American, #87.
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Item #50
With 75 Engravings and an Additional Signed Print by Richard Wagener; One of 80 Deluxe Copies from the Barbarian Press
50. WAGENER, Richard. A Dialogue with Wood Engraving. With an Introduction by the Artist. Endgrain Editions Five. [British Columbia, Canada:] Barbarian Press, 2019.
Folio. Unpaginated. With 75 wood engravings by Richard Wagener, 15 of which are in color, all printed from the original blocks. Each image is accompanied by a date (from 1983 to 2018), title, and caption. Two of the engravings are fold-out panoramas of Yosemite landscapes. Text printed in black and red using Eric Gill’s Joanna typeface on Zerkall paper. Includes a tipped-in frontispiece and an additional proof of the frontispiece, signed and numbered in pencil by Richard Wagener and housed in a large black envelope.
Patterned paper-covered boards in red, black, and white, quarter red morocco. With spine label lettered in gilt. Housed in a black cloth slipcase paneled with patterned paper matching the book’s covers. A fine copy, as new.
$1,500
One of 80 deluxe copies in a total edition of 130. The deluxe copies are bound in quarter red morocco and include a slipcase and a signed proof of the book’s frontispiece.
A Dialogue with Wood Engraving is a retrospective on the nearly four-decade career of California-based engraver Richard Wagener (b. 1944). The introduction by Wagener, along with his captions and epigrams, narrate and illuminate his work: the epigram that accompanies his piece Migration (2007) reads “I think in wood.”
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Item #50
Along with Wagener’s introduction, the essay “Printing the Journey” by Barbarian Press proprietor Jan Elsted has been included at the end of A Dialogue. The appendices in the present book also include a bibliography of Wagener’s writings, his Mixolydian Editions publications, additional appearances of his work, and articles about Wagener. A list of Wagener’s awards, a selection of his exhibitions, and a list of institutions that house his work comprise the last four pages of the appendices.
Item #50
Barbarian Press was founded in 1977 by Jan and Crispin Elsted and has been publishing the Endgrain Editions series since 2000. Each Endgrain Editions book showcases the work of a single engraver with all the images printed from the original blocks. Before Richard Wagener, the artists featured in the Endgrain Editions series were Gerard Brender à Brandis, Abigail Rorer, Peter Lazarov, and Simon Brett.
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Item #51
Children’s Travelogue of North America with a Large Fold-Out Map
51. WAKEFIELD, Priscilla. Excursions in North America, Described in Letters from a Gentleman and His Young Companion, to Their Friends in England. London: Printed and Sold by Darton and Harvey, Gracechurch-Street, 1806.
Twelvemo. iv, [7], 420, [4] pp. Final [4] pages are an itinerary of the locations visited during the voyages recounted in the text. With a frontispiece 16” by 14” fold-out copper engraved map printed in black with hand-colored accents showing the route traveled.
Contemporary dark brown sheep. Stamped in gilt on spine, with red morocco label lettered and ruled in gilt. Some rubbing to sheep. Open tear to edge of fold-out map, not affecting text. Some toning to edges and some foxing to title-page but overall a very good, tight, and clean copy.
$750
First edition.
Excursions in North America frames a description of the landscape, flora, and fauna of North America with a fictional account of the travels of two young men. The story is told in letters from the young men, Arthur Middleton and Henry Franklin, to their families in England. Though Priscilla Wakefield (1751-1832) had never traveled to North America, she researched extensively to write the narrative, which she presents as entertaining and instructional story for children (p. iii). Middleton and his family members also appear as characters in Wakefield’s other fictional travelogues: The Juvenile Travellers (1801), A Family Tour through the British Empire (1804), The Traveller in Africa (1814), and The Traveller in Asia (1817).
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Wakefield was the author of moral fiction for children, travel literature, and introductory science texts on botany and entomology. She valued educating children in as many areas of focus as possible; her instructional children’s fiction covered topics from politics and trade to natural history to decorative art. As a philanthropist, Wakefield’s projects included establishing a pension fund and a savings bank for the poor, as well as providing supplies to midwives.
Oxford DNB. The Dartons, G993. Howes, W21. Sabin, 100980.
Item #52
“Build Bridges Not Walls”
52. WINDOWPANE PRESS. Which Side Are You On? Seattle: The Windowpane Press, 2019.
6¼ inches by 8¼ inches. With 6 printed silhouettes; printed rule evoking the bars of a prison cell; and several styles of decorative paper, including paper with a chain-link pattern.
Tan cloth covers. Front cover features a cut-out panel through which a three-dimensional wire chain-link is visible, placed over a printed silhouette of a child. Accordion binding that can be folded out and placed on its tail edge to create a wall. Woven endpapers reminiscent of burlap. A fine copy, as new, in the clamshell case. $650
One of a small number of copies (no more than thirty) printed with hand-set type and bound by Bonnie Thompson Norman at the Windowpane Press.
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Which Side Are You On? compiles quotes by George Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Emma Lazarus that contradict current anti-immigrant sentiment and legislation in the United States. The book also compiles three slogans – including “nobody is illegal” and “build bridges not walls” – that are often used by protestors opposing ICE, the wall along the northern border of Mexico, and other anti-immigrant and anti-refugee measures enacted by the United States government.
Item #52
Bonnie Thompson Norman has been the proprietor of the Windowpane Press since 1978. Aside from producing artist’s books, Norman also teaches courses in letterpress printing and bookbinding at the Press. She has been a co-chair of the Northwest Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers, as well as a member of Book Arts Guild, Puget Sound Book Artists, and The Book Club of Washington. Recent Windowpane Press productions include The Second Coming (Again), which features the text of “The Second Coming” by Yeats paired with original paintings by Jodee Fenton. The Second Coming (Again) was printed by Norman at the Windowpane Press and published by Aubergine Atelier in 2019.
See the Windowpane Press website for more information.
Rare History of Important Women – Written by A Woman
53. [WOMEN.] Istoria delle donne di merito di diversi secoli scritta da mano maestra. Londra [i.e. Italy?]: 1786.
Octavo. iv, 185 pp.
Contemporary flexible boards, stitched. Some foxing to boards. Title in manuscript on spine. 1½” portion of spine is coming loose but still attached. Some light toning to endpapers, and a bit of faint foxing throughout, mostly at margins. Lower pastedown coming up at fore-edge, though still firmly attached to inside of lower board. Piece missing at fore-edge of leaves E7 and E8, affecting margin
67 Michael R. Thompson Rare Books • New Arrivals • March 2020 but not text. A gathering slightly sprung. Contemporary ink signature to margin of page iii. Bookplate of collector, printer, and illustrator John Lewis (1912-1996) on front pastedown. Overall a very good, clean, and bright copy of a rare book.
$950
First edition. ESTC notes that the imprint is probably false, as the typographical features suggest Italy as a printing location. ESTC lists only two copies: one at the British Library and one at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome.
Item #53
The statement in the title that the present work was written “da mano maestra,” with the feminine form “maestra” rather than the masculine “maestro,” indicates that the author was a woman. This is supported by the instances in which the author refers to herself in the text. In a discussion of the infamous Thucydides maxim, “The most virtuous women are the ones about whom the least is said,” the author writes: “Noi siamo spose e madri; siamo pur noi che facciamo la riunione e la dolcezza de la famiglie,” (p. 7). In the preface to the present work, the author explains that the book is intended to inform readers about the ways in which religious, political, and social circumstances shaped important female figures throughout European history (p. iii). Some of the women mentioned by name include Mary Stuart, Catherine de’ Medici, and Joanna I of Naples.
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