London: Printed for J. Bell, 1786. First edition. Sabin 61167; ESTC T43897. An opera in part based on Marmontel's Tale of the Coralie, with music by James Hook (1746-1827). A note on the front free endpaper in a learned bookseller's hand attributes the authorship to Harriet Horncastle Hook, the wife.....
Cambridge: Printed by J. Bentham, 1753-56. Third edition; second edition; second edition; first edition; first edition (respectively). ESTC: T118047; T107185; T10788; T107187; T43252; NCBEL II, 590; cf. Rothschild 1865. The famous Seatonian Prize Poems, an annual award that commenced in 1750 with the bequest of clergyman Thomas Seaton (1684-1741), who.....
London: Printed for A. Millar, 1744. First edition, the issue with the price beneath the imprint. ESTC T187239; Foxon A296; Hayward 168; NCBEL II, 535. A long poem in blank verse on the virtues of fresh air, diet, exercise, and the passions. John Armstrong (1709-1779 ) was a Scottish-born physician.....
See Lowe, Arnott and Robinson, English Theatrical Literature, 1163-1172; ESTC T20784; T20781; T20780; T20726 and T45401; NCBEL II, 812. A gathering of five important pamphlets dealing with the acrimonious dispute between two groups of partners of the Covent Garden Theatre - usually referred to as the “Proprietors' Dispute” - a......
London: Printed for A. Bell, W. Taylor and J. Baker, 1715. First edition. NCBEL II, 1709 (Oldmixon). A memoir of politician and author Arthur Maynwaring (1668-1712), whose "influence among both politicians and writers was great" (DNB), including Addison, Steele, Congreve and Vanbrugh. The versatile John Oldmixon was the editor and.....
London and Cambridge: Macmillan, 1864. First edition. NCBEL III, 554. A substantial collection of over 100 sonnets by Charles Turner (formerly Tennyson and often referred to as Tennyson-Turner), an accomplished and prolific sonneteer (his collected poems contained over 400). In the ODNB, Roger Evans writes that this 1864 collection, Turner's.....
London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1842. First English edition. Noted under BAL 11143. ¶ The second book by Caroline Kirkland (1801-1865), a collection of sketches about the life of raising a family on the Michigan frontier, where she moved to from New York in 1837.
Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1888. First edition. The scarce collected poems by the Concord minister and author David Atwood Wasson (1823-1887), one of the most highly regarded of the Transcendentalist writers, whose poems had previously only appeared in periodicals. This posthumous collection - Wasson's first and only book - was.....
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1884. First edition. BAL 19780. A substantial biographical treatment of one of the great American travelers, travel writers and poets, Bayard Taylor (1825-1878). Ink inscription on the front free endpaper of Walter Sillman, Wolfe Hall, Griswold College, Davenport, IA, Mar. Fri 13 / 1885."
Paris: Apud Mamertum Patissonium, in Officina Rob. Stephani, 1577. First edition edited by Joseph Scalinger. Adams C1156; Schreiber, The Estiennes, 248. The celebrated and often reprinted edition of Catullus and his two fellow Roman poets, Tibullus and Propertius, edited by French scholar Joseph Justus Scalinger (1549-1609), one of the most.....
Stockholm: Zacharias Haggström, 1829. First edition of the first Swedish translation. Langfeld & Blackburn, page 71; OCLC records three copies in the US (Harvard, Kansas and NYPL) and three in Sweden. The first edition in Swedish, translated by Lars Arnell, of Washington's Irving's Tales of a Traveller, his continuation of.....
Paris: Jules Gay, Editeur, 1863. First edition, number 75 of 300 numbered copies on Holland paper (of a total of 317 copies). An interesting compilation by Paul Lacroix (1806-84), French antiquary, bibliographer, editor and author, of the library of Marie Antoinette that was housed at her estate, Petit Trianon. The.....
Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1830. First edition. BAL 14874; Wright I, 1943; American Imprints 2696. An unusual novel based on Neal’s experiences in England, where he lived and worked as a writer between 1824 and 1827. Always a vocal partisan for American language and ways, the story relies heavily on.....
Paris: Chez Ponthieu, 1822. One of two French translations of The Sketch Book that were issued in 1822, its first year of publication in France; priority between the two is not known. Langfeld & Blackburn, page 67. One of the earliest examples of an important work of American literature translated.....
London: Printed for Private Circulation Only, 1888. First and only edition: "Of this Book Twenty-five Copies have been printed." There were also apparently three copies printed on vellum, as noted in one OCLC record. An essay on Shelley's faith, which concludes "Just as Religion is above all creeds, dogmas and.....
London: Chapman and Hall, 1863. Second edition, published shortly after the first. BAL 19258; cf. Smith, American Travelers Abroad, S200, which records an 1887 edition. A popular travel narrative about Rome by the American sculptor William Wetmore Story (1819-1895), who was a talented writer, as well. The title of "Roba,".....
London: Printed by Brettell for Appleyards, 1808. First edition. The first of three plays by Marie Therese Kemble (1774-1838), the Austrian-born English actress and mother of Fanny Kemble. She moved to England at an early age and became a popular child actress. She later married actor Charles Kemble, for whom.....
Weimar: Landes-Industrie-Comptoir, May, 1826. An example of the influence and spread of the news of Mary Somerville’s first scientific publication, “On the Magnetizing Power of the More Refrangible Solar Rays” – i.e., the magnetizing power of sunlight – that had been published in the February, 1826, issue of the Proceedings.....
Cambridge: Published by Hilliard and Brown, 1830. First editions. Currier & Tilton, Bibliography of Oliver Wendell Holmes, pages 14-17; Sabin 14407.; OCLC records nine copies. A complete run of a rare Harvard undergraduate literary magazine that contains 22 poems by Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of his first substantial contributions to.....
London: Printed by J. Plymsell; for T. N. Longman, 1797. First edition. ESTC N12984. Rachel Charlotte Biggs was acquainted with France when she traveled by herself there in 1792 to aid an aristocratic lady friend, during which time she witnessed the Revolution during its grim climax. Out of concern for.....
London: Printed by William Bulmer and Co., Shakespeare Printing Office; for John White, 1805. First and only edition. See Colbert, Women's Travel Writing, 1780-1840. Topographically inspired poetry about Turkey, Syria and Greece by Joseph Dacre Carlyle (1759-1804), posthumously edited by his sister Susanna Maria Carlyle (1752-1833), handsomely printed by William.....
London: Printed at the Minerva Press for A. K. Newman, 1813. First edition. NCBEL III, 734 (which cites the date as 1825); Blakey, Minerva Press, page 241 (but apparently did not locate a copy to examine); OCLC records nine copies; Colbert; ODNB. The first of several imaginary travelogues for young.....
San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 2019. First edition. A bio-history of the engaging San Francisco bookseller and botanical printmaker Henry Evans (1918-1990), who founded the Porpoise Bookshop and Peregrine Press in San Francisco in the early 1950s with the assistance of wife Patricia and daughter Judith. Evans later.....
A letter from 21-year-old Julia White Peck (1829-1859) to her future mother-in-law, Mrs. Henry Marsh of St. Louis, Missouri. Julia was about to travel to Turkey to serve as a Christian missionary with her fiancé, Rev. Dwight Marsh, who was stationed in Mosul (then part of Turkey). Her knowledge of.....
San Francisco: William Doxey, (1897). First edition. Harlan, At the Sign of the Lark, 38; BAL 19005 (Stoddard). The second book by Japanese-American poet Yone Noguchi (1875-1947), a short collection of poems, mostly about Yosemite Valley and the surrounding Sierras. Noguchi moved to San Francisco from his native Japan in.....