Donald Heald Rare Books Donald Heald Rare Books A Selection of Rare Books and Manuscripts Donald Heald Rare Books 124 East 74 Street New York, New York 10021 T: 212 · 744 · 3505 F: 212 · 628 · 7847 [email protected] www.donaldheald.com California International Antiquarian Book Fair 2019 Americana: Items 1 - 28 Voyages and Travels: Items 29 - 47 Natural History: Items 48 - 63 Miscellany, including Photography: Items 64 - 75 All purchases are subject to availability. All items are guaranteed as described. Any purchase may be returned for a full refund within ten working days as long as it is returned in the same condition and is packed and shipped correctly. The appropriate sales tax will be added for New York State residents. Payment via U.S. check drawn on a U.S. bank made payable to Donald A. Heald, wire transfer, bank draft, Paypal or by Visa, Mastercard, American Express or Discover cards. AMERICANA 1 BENJAMIN, Asher (1773-1845). The American Builder’s Companion; or, A System of Architecture, particularly adapted to the present style of building ... Second Edition, Corrected and Enlarged. Charlestown: Samuel Etheridge, Jr., 1811. Quarto (10 3/8 x 8 5/8 inches). iv, [1], 6-104, [2] pp. 59 engraved plates. Contemporary manuscript drawing of a staircase design on the rear blank. Contemporary sheep, flat spine ruled in gilt, green morocco lettering piece. Housed in a blue morocco backed box. Very rare early American architectural manual, by America’s first architectural writer: a work which greatly influenced Greek Revival architecture in America. Prior to the works of Asher Benjamin, beginning with his Country Builder’s Assistant (Greenfield: 1797), earlier architectural works printed in the United States were simply compilations or reprintings of British material (e.g. John Norman’s Town and Country Builder’s Assistant of 1786). Benjamin’s works are important American architectural treatises, by the man who was most responsible for disseminating late colonial details throughout New England, beautifully illustrated with engravings of colonial buildings, elevations of churches and homes, ornaments, cornices, etc., reflecting the influences of the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders. “[T]here is scarcely a village which in moulding profiles, cornice details, church spire, or farm-house does not reflect his influence” (DAB). “The career of our first American architectural writer, Asher Benjamin (1773-1845), covered several decades of the early nineteenth century. Both the books he wrote [Country Builder’s Assistant and the American Builder’s Companion] and the buildings he designed had an influence on building in New England that is still visible. He probably will be best remembered for his popularization of the federal style through his early books (and the Greek revival in his later ones)” (Thompson). First published in 1806, the present 1811 second edition is the best edition of this early work on American architectural design, containing more plates than the first edition and with significant corrections. Benjamin writes in the Preface: “Five years have elapsed since the first publication of the American Builder; during which time I have been constantly employed in drawing and executing plans for buildings. The experience of that time enables me to confirm some, and reject other former methods. Sixteen plates, which were in the first edition, I have laid aside, and have added twenty-nine new ones; which almost make this a new work.” Although principally a handbook for carpenters, this book also gives designs for houses, churches, a courthouse and more. The 1811 edition is rare, with no examples in the auction records for the last half century. Shaw & Shoemaker 22210; Rink 2527; Hitchcock 100; Neville Thompson, “Tools of Persuasion: The American Architectural Book of the Nineteenth Century” in The American Illustrated Book in the Nineteenth Century (1987), p.142. (#35905) $ 5,500 2 BOLLER, Henry A. Among the Indians. Eight Years in the Far West: 1858-1866. Embracing Sketches of Montana and Salt Lake. Philadelphia: T. Ellwood Zell, 1868. 8vo (7 1/4 x 5 inches). 428pp. Folding map. Publisher’s cloth, rebacked to style with the original spine laid down. First edition of a rare narrative of travels of a fur trader in the far west: complete with the folding map. Boller entered the fur trade on the Upper Missouri in 1858, in the service of the American Fur Company. Most of the book deals with his experiences with the Indians in Montana as a trader for the Company. His account is one of the most vivid and well written narratives of the trade, and one of the few relating to the period it addresses. At the end of his sojourn in the West, Boller spent some time in Utah among the Mormons. Wheat describes the map as notable for the places located and described in the text. It shows Montana and the Dakotas, with parts of Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska. Field 147; Graff 341; Howes B579; Sabin 6221; Streeter Sale 3079; Flake 582; Wheat Transmississippi 1180. (#36077) $ 3,500 3 BRADY, Mathew B. (c.1823-1896, photographer). - Charles Edwards LESTER (1815-1889, editor). The Gallery of Illustrious Americans, containing the portraits and biographical sketches of twenty-four of the most eminent citizens of the American Republic, since the death of Washington. From daguerreotypes by Brady - engraved by d’Avignon. New York: M.B.Brady, F.d’Avignon, C.Edwards Lester, 1850. 1st series only (all published), folio (21 x 15 inches). Letterpress title and salutation leaf. 12 lithographic portraits on india paper, mounted as issued, by d’Avignon after daguerreotypes by Brady (11) and a painting by S. Gambardella (1). Each plate with the publisher’s blindstamp in the lower margin, as issued. Expertly bound to style in half black morocco and period cloth covered boards, yellow endpapers. A famous but very rare work, including portraits of John James Audubon and President Zachary Taylor from daguerreotypes by Mathew Brady, the most famous American photographer of the mid-19th century. The series is made up of twelve portraits, all but one from Brady’s daguerreotypes, accompanied by biographical descriptions. It was intended as a celebration of the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century through the “noble deeds” of its most famous citizens. “In this Gallery, therefore, will be grouped together those American citizens, who have rendered the most signal [sic.] services to the Nation, since the death of the Father of the Republic. As there is nothing sectional in the scope of this work, it will be comprehensive in its spirit; and it is hoped that it may ... bind the Union still more firmly together” (Preface). The work had its roots in 1845 when “Brady, the commercial photographer, became Brady the historian, who used a camera as Bancroft did his pen. It was in this year that Brady began work on the tremendous project of preserving for posterity the pictures of all distinguished Americans, which he planned to publish in a massive volume with the title of The Gallery of Illustrious Americans ... The year 1850 was ... a milestone in Brady’s life; his dream of having his Gallery ... published became a reality” (J.D.Horan Mathew Brady Historian with a camera. 1955 pp.10-14). With Brady as the senior partner, the work was a joint publishing venture between the journalist and author Charles Edwards Lester (who undertook to write the biographical sketches), the lithographer F. d’Avignon and Brady. The “book was issued by D’Avignon’s Press ... It received fine notices from the Herald and other New York newspapers, but the public was apathetic and sales were disappointing. Brady had paid D’Avignon a hundred dollars apiece for each of the lithographic stones and Brady soon recognized the book as a critical success but a financial failure” (op.cit. p.14). From the title it is clear that Brady originally planned to issue a second series of 12 portraits, but, according to Horan, Brady “reluctantly abandoned the project.” Horan goes on to note that Sabin claims that the work was completed in 1856 but there are no extant copies of this second part, and it appears that Sabin was mistaken in this case. The subjects of the work are as follows: 1. General Zachary Taylor, twelfth President of the United States 2. John Caldwell Calhoun 3. Daniel Webster 4. Silas Wright 5. Henry Clay 6. John Charles Fremont 7. John James Audubon 8. William Hickling Prescott 9. General Winfield Scott 10. President Fillmore 11. William Ellery Channing 12. Lewis Cass J.D. Horan Mathew Brady historian with a camera pp.10-14; Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt, et. al. Mathew Brady and his world pp.47-48; Harold Francis Pfister Facing the light: Historic American portrait daguerreotypes p.22; Sabin 40221 (calls for a second series in error); Robert Taft Photography and the American scene pp.59- 60. (#35627) $ 22,500 4 CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH - James A. & Donald F. READ, illustrators. Journey to the Gold Diggins by Jeremiah Saddlebags. New York: Stringer & Townsend, [1849]. Oblong 8vo (5 1/2 x 9 inches). 63, [1]pp. Pictorial title and 112 wood engraved comic illustrations. Original green lower wrapper (upper wrapper, which repeats the title is lacking). Housed in a modern cloth slipcase. Rare first edition of among the earliest caricatures of the Forty-Niners: a classic of California Gold Rush comic book literature. “Of the American comic books on the subject of the gold rush, the best known, although it is scarce, is this.” This is the story of an “Argonaut who risked the hard journey to the gold fields, found that it was all a good deal more difficult than he had thought, avoided death by a hair’s breadth time and again, and came home poorer than he went.