Ithaca: Andrus, Woodruff, & Gauntlett, 1843. Hardcover. Third Edition. A detailed account of Jefferson's life with much background on the history and founding of the American government. Full brown leather boards. Both joints are cracked and top inch of leather on spine has chipped off. Rubbing and pulling to leather along edges and hinges of boards. Wear to corners and edges leaving board exposed. Browning to spine. Binders tape to interior of rear hinge and repair to front hinge. Frontis of Jefferson. Browning and foxing to first and last few pages - with light spots of foxing throughout the interior. Clean and bright overall. A good reading copy. 267 pages. AME/080923. Very Good. More

Basileae: Apud E. & J.R. Thurnisios, 1740. Hardcover. Volume I of III of Livy's history of Rome. Titus Livius (59 BC - AD 17) was a Roman historian known for this monumental history covering the earliest legends of Rome through the reign of Augustus (who was a friend of Livy's). Reprinted many times since its first writing; although, this particular printing is somewhat uncommon. Bound in full vellum boards with hand written title "Livius ronovi T.1" in black to spine. The vellum along the front hinge is starting with a four inch split. The front board remains securely sewn to the binding; however, the spine is nearly detached from the board along the front joint. Heavy rubbing, scuffing, and soiling to boards and spine. Engraved frontis and title page. In Latin. Occasional penned notes to the margins. Occasional spots of foxing, soiling, dampstaining (to top margins of some pages), and browning, but clean and bright interior overall. All edges red. Handsewn endbands, the bottom one frayed and coming loose. [44] 922 pages, Index, 62 pages (chronologia, caroli sigonii defensiones). ROM/072423. Very Good. More

Petersham, MA: Lone Oak Press, 2022. Hardcover. Number 11 of 56 standard signed and numbered copies. Master wood engraver Abigail Rorer is considered one of the finest engravers working today. She founded her Lone Oak Press in 1989 and has published many beautiful works that often focus on nature - animals, flowers, trees, and water. Abigail has also provided lovely illustrations for other private and commercial presses. Her fine press books have been in numerous exhibitions in the U.S., U.K., and Ireland. They can be found in many public and private collections.  Abigail writes in her prospectus about this important new work, saying that it is the first book in the "Extinct Pentalogy" series. Originally she had planned one larger volume covering five diverse animals, four that are extinct and one that came perilously close. But she decided that each animal deserves its own tribute. The western black rhinoceros was declared extinct in 2011 and all remaining rhinoceroses are endangered. She writes on her website: "Extinction as a theme has been a focus of The Lone Oak Press for a few years now, beginning with the publication of our book Extinction in 2015. We are living in the age of the Sixth Extinction, the Anthropocene: the Human Epoch. Human activity has made such an impact on our planet that climate patterns are changing, glaciers are melting, the ozone layer is thinning, and species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate. For such a magnificent and noble animal as the rhinoceros to be on the verge of total extinction is tragic and unacceptable. The rhinoceros has lived and flourished on this earth for tens of thousands of years. Within only a relatively short period of time, the last two hundred years or so, with the advent of guns, the Industrial Revolution, exploding populations, and other factors, we have decimated the rhino population and brought it to the brink of total extinction. This book is a way to honor a subspecies of the black rhinoceros that disappeared in 2011 and to highlight the plight of all species of rhinoceros.” Bound in a gray and black paper created from a hand-draw closeup image of rhinoceros skin over boards with a gray leather spine and red title label. The rear board includes a bullet sized hole in the board with red leather showing underneath – a visceral reminder of the contents of the book. The text was set in Dante and Othello type. The text and engravings were printed on Zerkell paper. Many of the engravings are multi-block color with some hand-coloring. Amy Borezo of shelter Bookwords bound the books. With prospectus. Housed in a slipcase covered in matching gray paper with rhino skin print In fine condition. Measures 7 x 9 inches. 52 pages. ARTISTSB/071923. Fine. More

Philadelphia: Luminice Press, 2023. One of 14 copies signed by the book artists. This charming and informative book, Spider and the Stars, is a Luminice Press artist book by Thomas Parker Williams and Mary Agnes Williams. It combines an original illustrated story for young readers with factual information about spiders and the curious way they travel long distances. Called ballooning, this form of spider travel appears to be flying, but in fact spiders take advantage of the Earth's electric field to become airborne. This particular spider became so airborne that she soared past the earth and planets to weave her webs among the stars! Book artist and printer Thomas Parker Williams began creating artists' books in 1998 while also painting. As of 2009 he has limited his art practice exclusively to artists' books. In that year he also began collaborating with his wife, photographer Mary Agnes Williams. In 2013 they started Luminice Press, incorporating letterpress printing into artists' books and broadsides. The artists' books draw on a range of conceptual sources in creating their books, including mathematics, music, literature, theology, philosophy, astronomy, natural sciences, and Eastern thought. Books by Williams or the Luminice Press may be found in over 75 public collections around the country. For this delightful collaboration, both artists developed the concept and design and did the printing. Thomas did the illustrations, the moveable pop-up and the binding. Mary Agnes wrote the original story and handset the text. The round black cover has a smaller cut out circle. It is laser cut wood with oil-based pochoir printed paper. The outer circle depicts the starry skies, while the spider and her web are visible in the smaller circle. When the cover is opened the spider and her web are fully visible. On the first page is a large brown, cream, and orange spider with moveable head and legs that pop open. There are 16 pages that tells the spider's story with colorful images of her and her adventurous travel to outer space. They are done in oil-based pochoir over linocut flood coats, with hand painted accents. The text is hand set in Janson and Janson Italic on Arches book paper and letterpress printed. Housed in an acrylic case with a brown title inset. In fine condition. The book measures 7.5 x 8 inches closed. The pop-up spider opens to 19 x 24 inches. ARTB/050523. Fine. More

London: Printed for William Darton Jun. 1818. Hardcover. Presumed first edition of this uncommon book. English author Mary Hughes Robson wrote many books geared towards the moral development of young ladies, including this one. She moved to Philadelphia and opened a school for girls with the help of philanthropist John Vaughan. She wrote several pamphlets for the Christian Tract Society and became a lifelong member. Bound in green and dark green pastepaper over dark brown leather spine with title in gilt. Heavy rubbing to boards, chipping to paper, and heavy wear to corners and edges of boards. Dampstaining to rear board and evidence of dampstaining to several pages. Top inch of title page is no longer present, with the word "The" removed. Pen and watercolor markings to pastedowns and verso of frontispiece. Occasional spots of foxing and soiling, but the text pages remain clean and bright overall. Lacks 2 pages of ads and both free endpapers. 206 pages plus 8 pages of publisher's ads. LIT/080423. Very Good. More

London: Fleuron, 1924. Hardcover. Number 46 of 350 copies. This is a lovely printed edition of Milton's poem, first published in 1671. It includes three full page illustrations and a number of ornaments by the noted artist Thomas Lowinsky. There is also an envelope with three of his illustrations protected by tissue guards in a rear pocket. Bound in green paper covered boards with a black cloth spine with gilt titling. Corners are bumped, some light soiling, and wear to top and bottom edges of spine. Interior pages are clean and bright and unopened. There is a cracked gutter at pages 40-41 not affecting the tightness of the binding. A nice copy in very good condition. Measures 6.75 x 8.75 inches. 80 pages. POET/090123. Very Good. More

New York: Studio of Russell Maret, 2023. Softcover. Number 28 of 100 possible copies, signed and numbered by the book artist. Sarah Moody has worked as an apprentice in the studio of Russell Maret since 2020. Although she has been the primary printer on several of Russell's most recent publications, this is the first where Sarah has taken the lead in producing a book in his studio. With Ornography, Sarah has designed, set, printed, and bound a book and has made all of the primary design decisions. The result if this charming and beautifully produced small book . In an accompanying prospectus, Russell writes that although he had accumulated a diverse collection of printer's ornaments and flowers, he had never used most of them. However, when he read the lines from a sonnet by Wilder Bentley: "Art's perverts and subverters are a blight on all the arts, like printers that hoard flowers yet never use them," it inspired him to have Sarah use his ornaments, dingbats, and fleurons to create this little book. Bound in antique Japanese katazome paper with an orange and gray design. Printed on 145gm wove paper fron the now-defunct Zerkall papermill in Garamond type. The striking ornaments are sharply printed in black. Housed in an archival gray paper slipcase. In fine condition. Measures 3.75 x 5.25 inches. Unpaginated [56 pages]. PRI/091323. Fine. More

Sherman Oaks, CA: Ninja Press, 1995. Number 129 of 160 numbered cpies, with 18 produced hors de commerce. Signed by the poet on the limitation page. Carolee Campbell's Ninja Press began in 1984. Since that time, she has produced about 30 books of poetry and many broadsides that are renowned for their fine craftsmanship and distinctive artistry. She is recognized as one of the most important of contemporary book artists practicing today. In book artist Russell Maret's magnificent bibliography of the press, Dispatches From the Lizard Brain, he documents the life and work of Carolee Campbell. The foreword and afterword of the bibliography beautifully describe Campbell's ethos as an artist and bookmaker that has informed her work since she began making books in 1984. Russell Maret writes of her: "It takes a special kind of person to know that what one is working on is not ready to be discussed. It takes someone...who unhurriedly allows her books to germinate in her lizard brain until they are ready to be dispatched into the world. With each new book Carolee teaches the rest of us how it should be done - not how to make books like hers , but like her, to make books the way the books want to be made." Manuel Cordova is perhaps one of the best known productions to be issued by the press. The poem was written by the esteemed American poet W.S. Merwin. From the prospectus: "This special edition [of the book] may be unfolded and read in hand, stanza by stanza, or opened entirely, thus revealing all forty-three, fourteen-line stanzas. Fully extended, the book is fifteen feet long. The five-color image of a river undulates alongside the poem, printed in black, while the [type] setting of the poem itself mirrors the sepentine meanders of the river." A five-color printed river design runs parallel to the text of Merwin's poem, which is printed in black. Campbell wrote in her chapbook, Chasing the Ideal Book:..."this book comes closest to my never-ending chase for The Ideal Book." Designed, printed, and bound by Carolee Campbell . From the colophon: The type is Samson uncial. Printed on handmade papers of persimmon-washed kakishibu for the text and raw flax paper for the enclosure. The enclosure is fastened with alum-tawed goat skin and bone. The map of the world printed on the liner of the enclosure is from the original, the first to show the world's currents, drawn in 1665 by Athanasius Kircher.The map is hand-tinted in five colors echoing the colors of the river. Housed in a plexiglass slipcase. In fine condition. The book can be found in many institutional collections including the Getty Center, the New York Public Library, Houghton Library at Harvard University, Yale, University of Illinois, Brown, the British Library, and at Trinity College in Dublin. PRI/071023. Fine. More

Seaton, England: The Old School Press and Leslie Gerry Editions, 2021. Hardcover. Number 56 of 60 copies signed by the artist. From the Old School Press website: "Another book on a favourite topic: Venice and its environs, in particular the surrounding lagoon, a subject that rarely gets the coverage that the city itself is all too readily given. For the text we've chosen excerpts from an early twentieth-century writer's work, that of E. V. Lucas, writing just at the outbreak of the First World War when things were probably less visitor friendly in some respects than they are today. Some things change, others remain as ever. Everyone in Burano is dirty. The Murano glass works is a tourist trap: 'the entrance may be 'free', but the exit rarely is so'. A pleasing connection is the visit to the printing house of the Armenian Mechitarists on the island of San Lazzaro, where the library can still be visited today. This is our second collaboration with artist Leslie Gerry who has prepared eight fabulous and evocative images of the islands in the Venetian lagoon." The text was hand-set in Hunt Roman and printed on a Western proof press. The paper is Bockingford. The binding is by Ludlow Bookbinders. The printer states; "we chose a mid-grey ink to soften the text slightly, in harmony with some of the images. Leslie has drawn and printed his eight images digitally of course, and printed them on 190gsm Bockingford paper from St Cuthberts Mill - this has been (uniquely) treated on both sides to be receptive to inkjet inks when printed on his 12-colour Surecolor P7500." The book is bound in quarter red cloth with one of Gerry's color images on the front and back covers. The book is housed in a blue cloth covered Japanese-style wrap with red ribbon ties that wrap around black buttons on the front two flaps. In fine condition. Measures about 9 x 11 inches. Unpaginated [40 pages]. PRI/083123. Fine. More

Seaton, England: Old School Press, 2016. Hardcover. Number 86 of the 135 standard copies signed by the author. There were also 30 deluxe copies numbered I-XXX Sold out). From the press website: "John Sutcliffe's The Colours of Rome, which we published in October 2013, was a great success and sold out quickly. So we were delighted to have the opportunity of working on another book by him on a similar colour-based theme. In his capacity as a decorative artist, John has done a great deal of work in the Cyclades. One of the outcomes of this has been a growing fascination with what happened to colour on the buildings of Greece and the islands in particular. Why are so many buildings today white? Has that always been the fashion there? White is what we tourists expect, but is that white authentic for the Cycladic islands in particular? John has researched the answers to these questions, visiting the islands and examining the walls of older buildings, looking for traces of the ‘lost colours’ and their history. Like The Colours of Rome, this new title has colour at its core. An enthusiastic cook, he has also taken the opportunity to sample – and weave into his researches – the cuisine of the Greek islands. Parallels emerge between colour and food, driven largely by the same external forces. Standard copies take the form of the case-bound book presented within a sleeve to the inside of which is attached a portfolio of twenty large, individually hand-painted cards illustrating the representative colours that John found, together with a swatch card with colour chips of each. Within the book there is coverage of each of the colours accompanied by further hand-painted chips. The colour paints used here have been specially mixed to match John’s field records. The book itself is bound in full cloth that has been silk-screened with stripes in the colours of the Greek national flag. The sleeve is a simple case, bound in blue cloth with a spine label, and the portfolio is formed from a heavy mid-grey paper." For this handsome book, the text was machine-set in Monotype Perpetua, with headings in digital Steinantik, and printed on 140gsm Madrid Litho on a winter proof press. Six linocuts by John are scattered through the text. There are also several pages with paper paint color strips. In fine condition. Measures 9 x 12.5 inches. 52 pages. PRI/082823. Fine. More

England: by the author, circa 1970. Paperback. Short retellings of ghost sighting and hauntings in Northern England including castles, manor houses, libraries, pubs, and more. Black and white photos of buildings. Side-stapled paper wrappers with red title and illustration to front cover. Occasional spots of soiling including a few pencil markings to the wrappers, but clean overall. 68 pages. OCC/072123. Very Good. More

Oxford: Collingwoond and Co., 1811. Hardcover. Quite scarce. No copies in commerce, no auction records save for mention of the book having appeared in long-ago auction house catalogs, including the catalog for the H. Buxton Forman auction at Anderson Galleries in 1920. OCLC lists thirteen libraries owning a copy, of which ten are in the U.S. and three internationally. Little is known about the author and poet, Janetta Philipps other than that she authored this book of poetry, and that it is possible that she was the anonymous author of the novel Delaval, published in 1802. In one her poems in this book on page 31, she notes that her poem "Stanzas" was "inserted in the novel of Delaval. However, there is intriguing other information about her in a few sources. In a biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley by James Bieri he writes that the poet was casting about for young female poets to support and help publish, and wrote to Philipps offering to help her publish her work after being shown some of her verses. He had a brief exchange of letters with her. It is not clear what finally transpired, but it is believed by some that Shelley did help her financially. He is listed as a subscriber to her book. The English novelist, John Cordy Jeaffreson, wrote with more certainty about Shelley's financial backing in chapter IV of his book, Real Shelley. " To believe all that is told to his honour in Shelley’s Early Life is to believe that Shelley made himself responsible for the costs and charges of publishing the little volume of verse, which gave Miss Janetta Phillips her modest place in literary annals. That Miss Janetta was writing poetry whilst Shelley kept terms at Oxford, that she rose to a high place in his poetical regard in the spring of 1811, and that...he was at much pains to get subscribers for her book of poems, are matters of historic certainty. The long list of subscribers to Poems by Janetta Phillips, affords conclusive evidence that, whilst regarding her poetical ability with approval, Shelley bestirred himself in Oxford, London, and Sussex, to further Miss Janetta’s literary venture. Subscribing himself for six copies of the work. It was, doubtless, at Shelley’s solicitation that his Oxford bookseller consented to subscribe for Miss Janetta’s little volume. It is probable that the young lady had other friends besides Shelley in the University, where she found no less than eighty subscribers for her Poems (there are actually a few hundred names in the subscriber list). Still, it may be safely assumed, she was considerably indebted to Shelley’s influence in the colleges for the sympathy and money of so many gownsmen. That Shelley admired Miss Janetta’s poetry, and pushed the fortunes of her book to the utmost of his ability, is certain." Bound in black grained cloth with an elaborate gilt design and rulings on both covers. and gilt design and titling to spine. Covers are rubbed and bumped. There is much wear along the joints, and the the front cover has been expertly reattached. It is worn at the top and bottom with fading to gilt. Rear hinge is tender. Gilt dentelles and marbled endpapers with light staining along the edges of the dentelles. Interior pages have browning, mainly along the margins, and intermittant spotting. Thhis copy bears the bookplate of Francis John Stainforth (1797-1866). Stainforth was an Anglican clergyman who was the owner the largest private library of Anglophone women writers, with more than 7000 editions and 2800 writers. Despite flaws this is a desirable copy of a very uncommon book with an interesting history associated with a major English poet. Measures 4.75 x 7.25 inches. 68 pages plus 10 page list of subscribers. POE/072123. Very Good. More