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A Dictionary of the English Language (in 2 vols.)

A Dictionary of the English Language (in 2 vols.) by Johnson, Samuel

4 to 7 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: $15.00
Details
$19,500.00
( US$)
Seller: Whitmore Rare Books
Title
A Dictionary of the English Language (in 2 vols.)
Author
Johnson, Samuel
Seller
Whitmore Rare Books (United States)
Description
London: W. Strahan, 1755. First edition. Two large folio volumes (16 5/8 x 9 7/8 inches; 422 x 251 mm.). Unpaginated. Text in double columns. Title-pages printed in red and black. Decorative woodcut tail-pieces. Title-pages with light staining, first title-page (A1) with an early faded ink inscription at foot of page and small expert repairs to the fore and lower edge and top left-hand corner with no loss of text. Expertly repaired closed tear to left-hand margin with no loss of text. First twenty leaves of volume one has a crease to the lower corner, and the last three leaves (13B-14Z) have a stain on the top corner. The last leaf (14Z) has a small piece (2 1/4 x 1 inch) replaced in the outer margin with no loss of text and a small lower marginal repair. Marginal pencil notation on 11R2 recto. Small stains to top margins of 12R2 verso and 12T2 verso. Volume two with very small ink stain to fore-edge margins of 30Z-31C, ink stain and early ink notations to 16O verso, small piece torn away from lower corner of 19R2, small clean lower marginal tears to 24X and 29B2. The last few leaves slightly creased at lower corner, last leaf (31C2) with tiny repair to lower margin. The last leaf of the preface (C2 verso) has a seven line early ink inscription from Boswell's Life of Johnson "The only Aid Dr. Johnson received was a Paper containing twenty etymologies from a Person then unknown, whom he afterwards found to be DR. Pearce, Bishop of Rochester. Boswell's Life of Johnson. The Author was now only in his 46th year and lived almost thirty years after the Publication of this Great Work." Full contemporary dark brown calf, covers with double-rule blind borders, spines with six raised bands, decoratively tooled in blind in compartments, red and dark green morocco labels lettered in gilt, later endpapers, all edges sprinkled red. Expertly restored with the original spines laid down, head, tail and corners repaired. First edition of "the most amazing, enduring and endearing one-man feat in the field of lexicography" (PMM). Samuel Johnson began his epic dictionary in 1747 and "the mammoth tome took Johnson nearly 9 years to complete, remarkably almost completely single-handedly, and is now considered as one of the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language" (Public Domain Review). For his version of the dictionary, Johnson drew on English literary classics, including quotations from Shakespeare, Lock, Milton, and many others. In some definitions, his personality shines through, for examples he "defines 'lexicographer' as 'a harmless drudge'; he exemplifies 'dull' with the sentence, 'to make dictionaries is dull work'" (Vassar). Johnson's project forever impacted how modern dictionaries are constructed and used. Courtney and Nichol Smith, pp. 54-55. Grolier, 100 English, 50. PMM 201. Rothschild 1237.
CLASS OF 1859 YALE UNIVERSITY CLASS BOOK BELONGING TO POPULAR MEMBER SAMUEL DAVIS PAGE

CLASS OF 1859 YALE UNIVERSITY CLASS BOOK BELONGING TO POPULAR MEMBER SAMUEL DAVIS PAGE by [Yale University Class Book 1859]

7 to 14 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: $10.00
Details
$2,500.00
( US$)
Seller: David M. Lesser, Fine Antiquarian Books LLC
Title
CLASS OF 1859 YALE UNIVERSITY CLASS BOOK BELONGING TO POPULAR MEMBER SAMUEL DAVIS PAGE
Author
[Yale University Class Book 1859]
Seller
David M. Lesser, Fine Antiquarian Books LLC (United States)
Description
New Haven, 1859. Massive, thick 4to class book for Yale University Class of 1859, inscribed by most of its members. 11" x 8-3/4," original gilt pictorial morocco with gilt portrait of Elihu Yale on front board and University seal on rear board. Spine title, "Class Book, Yale, 1859." Binding rubbed at edges with short separation at ribbed spine extremities, front board detached but present. All edges gilt; attractive and clean contents. Original tissue guards, 128 engravings, two lithographs, one photograph; approximately 97 signed manuscript leaves, as follows: three engraved campus views (Yale College, Alumni Hall, and Library); 23 engravings of past and present presidents and faculty members, five with accompanying autograph leaves (President Theodore Woolsey and professors Chauncey Goodrich, William Larned, Noah Porter, and James Hadley); 100 engravings of Class of 1859 classmates (about 90 of them accompanied by autograph leaves) plus three autograph leaves for classmates without engravings; two engravings for Class of 1858 graduates; three engraved views of New Haven scenes; an albumen photograph of the Yale crew team; and two elaborate lithographs of Yale ceremonies. Closing out the volume are two lithographs: "Yale, the Burial of Euclid," and "Initiation Yale Freshmen, Secret Societies," depicting outrageously costumed students above a pile of skulls and bones. Except for the detached front board, Very Good. This is Samuel Davis Page's book. He graduated from Yale in 1859. Page (1840-1921) was a popular guy, with a winning sense of humor. He signed the page after his own senior picture, accusing himself, "By hasty thoughtless words you have often made yourself enemies and alienated friends," and come to be known as a "disagreeable fellow and a fool." He counsels himself to be "more guarded in the use of your tongue. Be less hasty in yielding to prejudice. Keep your heart open to all. Your best friend, or (it may be) your worst enemy, S. Davis Page." He was a member of Sigma Delta and Delta Kappa Epsilon, and Commodore of the Yale "Navy." He stroked the first Yale crew to defeat Harvard. Later he was Comptroller of Philadelphia in 1888, and appointed Assistant United States Treasurer in Philadelphia by President Grover Cleveland. He was associated with United States Senator Boies Penrose in the practice of law. Most members of the class, who were of prime fighting age for the Civil War, lived well-documented and eventful lives. A few examples who inscribed this book include class valedictorian Lieutenant Edward Carrington Jr. (1838-1865), who survived many battles before succumbing on the battlefield in March 1865. Thomas C. Brainard ran a Union military hospital. Daniel Bowe and T. Edwin Ruggles both went to Port Royal, SC in 1862 to run cotton plantations under Union military rule. Hezekiah Watkins served under Sherman in the Atlanta campaign; his entry here waxes rhapsodically for four pages about the big victory over Harvard, and discusses the crew's group portrait featured at the end of the volume. Diodate Hannahs was killed with the 6th New York Cavalry at Williamsburg in 1862; his entry quotes Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade." On the other side were Robert A. Stiles of Kentucky, whose memoir of life as a Confederate officer was titled "Four Years under Marse Robert"; and Peter Vivian Daniel, who gave his life at Chickamauga as Captain of the 5th Kentucky Infantry regiment.
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Structural components of bacteriophage. Offprint by Brenner et al., Sydney

7 to 14 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: $7.00
Details
$950.00
( US$)
Seller: Jeremy Norman & Co., Inc.
Title
Structural components of bacteriophage. Offprint
Author
Brenner et al., Sydney
Seller
Jeremy Norman & Co., Inc. (United States)
Description
1959. Brenner, Sydney (1927- ); Streisinger, G.; Horne, R. W.; Champe, S. P.; Barnett, L.; Benzer, Seymour (1921- ); and Rees, M. W. Structural components of bacteriophage. Offprint from J. Mol. Biol. 1 (1959). 281-292pp. 13 plates on 7 leaves. 254 x 172 mm. Without wrappers as issued. Fine. First Separate Edition. "A procedure is described for the efficient disjoining of the even-numbered T bacteriophages into structural components. . . . The components have been characterized by electron microscopy using the phosphotungstate method and by chemical and physical methods. . . . These studies show that the proteins composing the head, sheath and tail fibers of the phage have different primary structures" (p. 281). .
Autograph Letter, Signed, by James Denver as Commissioner of Indian Affairs to his Wife Louise Rombach Denver , Describing Crime on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and Referencing the Plug Uglies, 1857

Autograph Letter, Signed, by James Denver as Commissioner of Indian Affairs to his Wife Louise Rombach Denver , Describing Crime on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and Referencing the Plug Uglies, 1857 by [Crime - Plug Uglies] Denver, James W.

7 to 14 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: FREE
Details
$450.00
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Seller: Auger Down Books
Title
Autograph Letter, Signed, by James Denver as Commissioner of Indian Affairs to his Wife Louise Rombach Denver , Describing Crime on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and Referencing the Plug Uglies, 1857
Author
[Crime - Plug Uglies] Denver, James W.
Seller
Auger Down Books (United States)
Condition
Fine
Description
Washington, 1857. Autograph letter measuring 8 x 5 inches bifolium, with free franked stampless cover. Fine condition. Fine. An interesting letter written by James W. Denver, written while he was serving as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, describing crime on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1857. He writes: “We have great times on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. For a long time past, merchandise has been lost along the line, by being thrown out of the cars while under way, some of the confederates being ready to pitch them up and sell them. To put a stop to this, the Directors ordered the cars when loaded to be sealed up and not to be opened until they should arrive at the place of destination. The conductors took offense and said that this was a reflection on them, quit the trains and would not let anybody else take their places. In order to prevent this, they attacked the trains passing Ellicott’s Mills and succeeded in turning back all but one. Today it was rumored that the Plug Uglies had possession of the track between Baltimore and the Relay House, but this is hardly so as a train has, I am told, arrived here this evening. This is a very extraordinary affair as it is in fact an effort to give greater license to stealing, and from the way they have acted, there is not much doubt but the conductors were engaged in the plundering.” The Plug Uglies first operated in Baltimore beginning in 1854. Several iterations of the Nativist gang eventually formed, all of which were referred to by the same name. They would be involved, a month later, in the Know Nothing Riot in Washington D.C. in June of 1857, the same month that Denver would gain his appointment as Secretary of Kansas Territory. Full text follows: My Dear Wife, The cheerful tone of your letter of the 28th ult. pleases me very much. I hope and trust that will be ever thus. A light heart and cheerful disposition makes life a perennial springtime. There is nothing like it. Keep up your sprits ever thus and besides being the pride of my life, you will be my light also—the polar star of my existence. O Lou! how lonely I feel here at times without you! Were we only together, how much more pleasantly would the time pass away. Still I have no great reason to complain of fortune, but ought rather to be thankful for the great boon she has vouchsafed to me in making you mine for life. To know this, it is easy to imagine a good angel always hovering near me, giving warning of besetting dangers and urging me on to greater usefulness, and then to dream of the bright approving smiles of her I love so well. And though distant, I doubt not but they are as sweet and as kind as though present and palpable to my vision. Well, well, what must be, I suppose, must be, and we must grin and bear it; but I wish you were here, and not the subject of mere dreams and imaginings. We have great times on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. For a long time past, merchandise has been lost along the line, by being thrown out of the cars while under way, some of the confederates being ready to pitch them up and sell them. To put a stop to this, the Directors ordered the cars when loaded to be sealed up and not to be opened until they should arrive at the place of destination. The conductors took offense and said that this was a reflection on them, quit the trains and would not let anybody else take their places. In order to prevent this, they attacked the trains passing Ellicott’s Mills and succeeded in turning back all but one. Today it was rumored that the Plug Uglies had possession of the track between Baltimore and the Relay House, but this is hardly so as a train has, I am told, arrived here this evening. This is a very extraordinary affair as it is in fact an effort to give greater license to stealing, and from the way they have acted, there is not much doubt but the conductors were engaged in the plundering. Judge [Stephen A.] Douglass intends leaving here with his family tomorrow. Nat Cartmell was here on Friday. He said they were all well in Virginia except cousin John Lupton who was convalescing. Tell your father I will keep him posted, and tell your mother to keep you at work—if she can. My love to all. Goodnight. God bless you, my own dear Lou. Adieu. — Will.
“Packing Onions.”

“Packing Onions.”

7 to 14 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: $6.50
Details
$375.00
( US$)
Seller: James Arsenault & Company
Title
“Packing Onions.”
Seller
James Arsenault & Company (United States)
Description
Bermuda, ca. 1885. Albumen print, 6.75” x 9” on larger paperboard mount with title in manuscript below image. CONDITION: Very good, light soiling to upper left corner, otherwise fine. An original photograph documenting Afro-Bermudian laborers packing what are likely sweet “Tenerife” onions. Shown here is a group of four men, two women, and two male children, all of African descent, posed in the act of crating onions. As harvest was underway, we can surmise that this photograph was taken around March or April, ca. 1885. A variant of this image was reproduced as a postcard by J. H. Bradley & Co. during the 1910s, an example of which is included with this offering. Throughout the nineteenth century, onions were the single highest export from Bermuda to the United States. Known for their mild and sweeter flavor than the typical variety grown in the United States, onions accounted for shipments of over 4,000 tons of produce, leading to Bermuda being dubbed “The Onion Patch” and Bermudans “Onions.” To cultivate their prize crop, farm owners used Afro-Bermudian field workers—initially as enslaved labor prior to the emancipation act of 1834, and afterwards as a reliable source of “free wage” labor wherein Afro-Bermudians were all but forced to continue working for their previous owners (Craton). To “mind the onion seeds” once they were planted in September, Black children were tasked with keeping birds away from the planted seeds, while, as this photograph suggests, adults would pull the ripe crop between March and April. Though Bermuda’s economic development profited from the continued impoverishment of the enslaved and their descendents working in onion patches, “silver-smithing was [also] taught by the traders to the Colony’s slaves” and so the formerly enslaved would often secretly possess silver which would be passed down in the family and used to pay for occasional larger expenses (Musson).  REFERENCES: Musson, Nellie Eileen. Mind the Onion Seed: Black “Roots” Bermuda (Bermuda Islands 1979), p. 23; Craton, Michael. “Transition from Slavery to Other Forms of Labor in the British Caribbean ca. 1790–1890,” NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids Vol. 68, No. 1/2 (Netherlands: 1994), p. 45; Contextual information about the onion trade and cultivation found at “Ode to the Onion: The History and Culture of Bermuda's Once Famous Export,” at The Bermudian Magazine online, and at Hubbell, Diana. “Remembering When Bermuda was an Onion Island,” Atlas Obscura online.
On My Way: Being the Book of Art Young in Text and Picture

On My Way: Being the Book of Art Young in Text and Picture by YOUNG, Art

4 to 14 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: $6.50
Details
$300.00
( US$)
Seller: Lorne Bair Rare Books
Title
On My Way: Being the Book of Art Young in Text and Picture
Author
YOUNG, Art
Seller
Lorne Bair Rare Books (United States)
Description
New York: Horace Liveright, 1928. First Trade Edition. First Printing. Octavo (22.5cm); tan pictorial cloth boards, stamped in red and black on spine and front cover; brick red topstain; pictorial endpapers; dustjacket; viii,303pp, with 20 inserted leaves of plates (halftones) and 17 text illustrations. Thin, partial split along right edge of front pastedown, else Near Fine. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced $4.00), showing light rubbing to extremities, a few tiny nicks to crown, with shallow loss along upper edge of rear panel, and a few closed tears; Very Good+ or better. Sharp copy of the left-wing cartoonist's colorful autobiography. Considerably less common in the trade edition than the ubiquitous limited edition of 1,000 copies.
The Common Good: Stalement or Reconstruction [Alternatives, no. 2]

The Common Good: Stalement or Reconstruction [Alternatives, no. 2] by ALPEROVITZ, Gar

4 to 14 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: $1.50
Details
$15.00
( US$)
Seller: Lorne Bair Rare Books
Title
The Common Good: Stalement or Reconstruction [Alternatives, no. 2]
Author
ALPEROVITZ, Gar
Seller
Lorne Bair Rare Books (United States)
Description
[Bryn Mawr, PA: Analysis and Policy Press / Institute for Democratic Socialism, 1987?]. First Edition. Octavo (21cm.); original white decorative staplebound card wrappers printed in red and black; [2],15pp. A few leaves creased at upper fore-edge corner, light dust-soil, else Very Good or better.
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SEA AND COAST FISHING: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO CALM WATER FISHING IN INLETS AND ESTUARIES by AFLALO, F.G

7 to 14 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: $10.99
Details
$85.00
( EU VAT US$0)
Seller: Houle Rare Books & Autographs
Title
SEA AND COAST FISHING: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO CALM WATER FISHING IN INLETS AND ESTUARIES
Author
AFLALO, F.G
Seller
Houle Rare Books & Autographs (United States)
Description
LONDON, GRANT RICHARDS, 1901., 1901. ORIGINAL GILT AND BLACK STAMPED PICTORIAL BLUE CLOTH, T.E.G. (LACKS FRONT FREE ENDPAPER). ILLUSTRATED WITH HALF TONE PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS. FIRST EDITION. GOOD-VERY GOOD.. F. Hardcover.

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