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Tag Archives: London

Now is the night one blue dew.

26 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

American History Printing Association, antiquarian, booksellers, Carol Sandberg, Carolee Campbell, cousins, Essex House Press, Fairfax, floriated initials, Gaylord Schanilec, Jack Stauffacher, James Agee, Jerry Kelly, John Keats, Joni Kay Miller, Kathleen Thompson, London, Los Angeles, Luise Putcamp jr, Melrose, Michael R. Thompson Rare Books, Michael Thompson, Mississippi, music, poems, poetry, poets, Robin Price, Rover Art Books, Third, Universal Books, vellum, Walter de la Mare, William Shakespeare, Zeitlin & Van Brugge

PS3501-G35-H3-1964-cover

“…do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”
— John Keats from Ode on a Grecian Urn

In Memoriam — Kathleen Thompson

Kathleen Thompson of Michael R. Thompson Rare Books worked for several Los Angeles antiquarian booksellers, including Universal Books, Royer Art Books, and Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, before entering into a partnership with her husband, Michael Thompson, and Carol Sandberg in 1985. Hers was often the first face one encountered when visiting their shops on Melrose, Fairfax, and Third. We remember Kathleen for her warmth, sense of humor, thoughtfulness, and intelligence.

I had the pleasure of many conversations with Kathleen over the phone and by email. I will miss her soft Mississippi meter, which, thank goodness, she never did lose, even though she swore she had. We wrote to each other about cousins, music, poets and poems. Here are a few of her favorites.

PR2841-A2-E55-pg153
THE POEMS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
London: Essex House Press, 1899
PR2841 A2 E55

Printed in black and red. Illustrated with floriated initials and one full-page drawing. Bound in vellum with ties. Edition of four hundred and fifty copies. Rare Books copy is no. 274.


Z250-V47-2006-3panel
VERSE INTO TYPE THE APHA POETRY PORTFOLIO
American Printing History Association
S. l.: American Printing History Association, 2006
Z250 V47 2006

Seventeen gatherings contributed by fifteen different presses in a variety of typefaces, colors, formats, papers, all letterpress printed, some illustrated. Contributors include Carolee Campbell, Jerry Kelly, Robin Price, Gaylord Schanilec, Jack Stauffacher, and others. Issued in blue cloth clamshell box with paper label. Edition of two hundred copies.


And this from Walter de la Mare:

All That’s Past

Very old are the woods;
And the buds that break
Out of the brier’s boughs,
When March winds wake,
So old with their beauty are–
Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.
Very old are the brooks;
And the rills that rise
Where snow sleeps cold beneath
The azure skies
Sing such a history
Of come and gone,
Their every drop is as wise
As Solomon.

Very old are we men;
Our dreams are tales
Told in dim Eden
By Eve’s nightingales;
We wake and whisper awhile,
But, the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.

PR1309-C485-N85-1925-CoverPattern


And this from James Agee:

Knoxville: Summer of 1915

(We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in that time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.)

…It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds’ hung havens, hangars. People go by; things go by. A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt; a loud auto; a quiet auto; people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually, the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard and starched milk, the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber.

A streetcar raising its iron moan; stopping, belling and starting; stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past, the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks; the iron whine rises on rising speed; still risen, faints; halts; the faint stinging bell; rises again, still fainter, fainting, lifting, lifts, faints foregone: forgotten. Now is the night one blue dew.

PS3501-G35-H3-1964-cover


And this from the aunt of Kathleen’s “dearest old friend,” Joni Kay Miller (1945-2017):

It is peculiar mercy none can find
In this lost time where only losers dwell
Who lose the most, the ones who left behind
Wisdom and love and never knew them well
Or those who know too well and as they stay
Inherit silence and the vacant day.
— Luise Putcamp jr.


And I had the honor of being called by Kathleen “a kindred spirit, too.”
— Luise Poulton


Memory eternal!

PS3501-G35-H3-1964-cover(feature)

26 March 2017

Friends Gather for Kathleen, 26 March 2017

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Mrs. Delany & Her Circle

07 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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Alicia Weisberg-Roberts, Book and Paper Conservator, Brigham Young University, flowers, J. Willard Marriott Library, Kohleen Reeder Jones, London, Mark Laird, Mrs. Delaney, New Haven, rare books, Sir John Soane' Museum, Yale Center for British Art

MrsD&HerCircleCover

“I have invented a new way of imitating flowers.”
— Mrs. Delany

MRS. DELANY AND HER CIRCLE
Mark Laird and Alicia Weisberg-Roberts, eds.
New Haven: Yale Center for British Art; London: Sir John Soane’s Museum;… 2009
NX547.6 D45 M77 2009

Publication to accompany an exhibition organized by the Yale Center for British Art in association with Sir John Soane’s Museum, London: Yale Center for British Art, September 24, 2009 through January 3, 2010 and Sir John Soane’s Museum, February 18, 2010 through May 1, 2010.

We are especially fond of this book for two reasons:

First, our friend and colleague, Kohleen Reeder Jones, worked on this project and wrote the chapter, “The ‘Paper Mosaick’ Practice of Mrs. Delaney & Her Circle.” Kohleen worked at the J. Willard Marriott Library as the Book and Paper Conservator. She went from here to Brigham Young University and then home, where she takes care of her family as wonderfully as she took care of the work of Mrs. Delaney and of our rare books.

MrsD&HerCirclePg224

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Second, the Rare Books copy is a gift of a most generous friend, who insists on anonymity.

Thank you, friends!

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Book of the Week — The Architextures 1-7: The Man of Music

13 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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abaca, Anthropology, Belgium, bookbinding, brass, California, Cambridge, Carolee Campbell, clamshell, English, Felix Titling, Fuji Paper Mills Cooperative, Fulbright, Guatemala, history, Ian Robinson, initials, Japan, Jonathan Cape, Katie MacGregor, King's College, kyosei-shi, letterpress, London, London School of Economics, MacGregor/Vinzani, Maine, Meridien, Nathaniel Tarn, Ninja Press, Pablo Neruda, papermaking, Paris, poetry, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Sherman Oaks, Tokuschi-ma, United States, University of Chicago, Vandercook Universal I, Whiting, wood blocks, Yale University

PS3570-A635-A7-1999-cover

“Who are we that fled the thousand lives we did not lead in order to escape the very one life that we were destined for?”

The Architextures 1-7: The Man of Music
Nathaniel Tarn (b. 1928)
Sherman Oaks, CA: Ninja Press, 1999
PS3570 A635 A7 1999

Nathaniel Tarn was born in Paris and lived in Belgium until he was eleven. He studied history and English at King’s College, Cambridge. After returning to Paris he studied anthropology and received a Fulbright grant. He studied at Yale University and the University of Chicago and did his doctoral fieldwork in Guatemala. He then completed his graduate studies at the London School of Economics. Tarn published his first volume of poetry, Old Savage/Young City, in 1964. His next published work was a translation of Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Pichhu, published by Jonathan Cape, in London. He joined Jonathan Cape as General Editor of its international series.

In 1970, he immigrated to the United States, became a citizen, and taught as Visiting Professor of Romance Languages at Princeton University, and later, at Rutgers and other universities.

Of his poetry, Ian Robinson wrote in 1982, “Landscape, geography, and the history and culture of that landscape, that geography, of the societies living there now and that lived there once, all of the present in its present, are the key factors for Tarn.”

The Architextures 1-7 are the first seven from a collection of seventy prose poems.

The book was handset and letterpress printed on a Vandercook Universal I with Meridien type in six colors and 72pt Felix Titling for display and opening initials. Paper is dove-gray abaca, made by Katie MacGregor at the MacGregor/Vinzani papermaking studio in Whiting, Maine. Six-color wood blocks illustrate the text throughout.

PS3570-A635-A7-1999-Title

Ninja Press was begun in 1984 by Carolee Campbell, whose main publishing focus is contemporary poetry. Carolee began her book work as a photographer working with nineteenth and twentieth-century photographic processes. Binding her photograph sequences introduced her to bookbinding and experimental book structures. She then expanded her book work with letterpress printing. Bookmaking opened “the way into contemporary poetry — confronting it for the first time with a directness and penetration she seldom experienced as a reader.” (Ninja Press) All book work from Ninja Press is by Carolee Campbell.

Bound in torched and patinated thin brass boards, with a spine of brass and stainless steel hinges. Issued in a clamshell box covered in black kyosei-shi, a handmade paper from the Fuji Paper Mills Cooperative in Tokushi-ma, Japan. Edition of sixty-five numbered copies, signed by the poet and the bookmaker.

PS3570-A635-A7-1999-quote

PS3570-A635-A7-1999-Spread1

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Book of the Week — Herbert’s Remains, or, Sundry Pieces of that Sweet…

06 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

American, Barnabas Oley, Church of England, George Herbert, Isaak Walton, London, metaphysics, poems, poet, Robert S. Pirie, Sotheby's, Timothy Garthwait, woodcut borders, woodcut initials

Herberts-Title

“Take heed of the wrath of a mighty man, and the tumult of the people.”

HERBERT’S REMAINS. OR, SUNDRY PIECES OF THAT SWEET…
George Herbert (1593-1633)
London: Printed for Timothy Garthwait, 1652
First edition
PR3507 A1 1652

George Herbert was a clergyman with the Church of England. He is known to this day as a poet of metaphysics, his poems notable for their controlled and inventive use of form. The famous central section (“The Church”) of his collection for The Temple (1633) contains more than 160 lyrics in stanza forms unique to their composition and subject. In tone and narrative mode, Herbert demonstrated his versatility with lyric conversations, allegories, fables, monologues, epigrams, meditations, and prayers.

The most significant of Herbert’s prose writings is A Priest to the Temple, a work on priestly conduct written during his final years. He wrote of the model church man and the fundamental principles of faith, human relations, and religious rhetoric.

Priest and Jacula, a collection of proverbial sayings, were published together as Herbert’s Remains, prefaced by Barnabas Oley’s “View of the life and vertues of the author,” which was a source for Isaak Walton’s Life of Mr. George Herbert (1670). A Priest to the Temple and Jacula Prudentum have separate title pages, the later dated 1651. Some copies of Herbert’s Remains exist without the previously stated titles. Jacula was first printed as Outlandish Proverbs in 1640 and contained 1,032 sayings; Jacula was augmented with an additional sixty-eight sayings in the present edition.

Woodcut borders and initials.

Rare Books copy bound in contemporary calf with gilt-lettered spine ruled in blind, marbled edges. Bookplate of Robert S. Pirie (1934-2015) on front pastedown. Robert Pirie was an American attorney. His extensive collection of rare books and manuscripts was auctioned by Sotheby’s in December of 2015.

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Book of the Week — Researches: Concerning the Institutions & Monuments of the Ancient Inhabitants of America, with Descriptions and…

23 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week, Recommended Reading

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Tags

Alexander von Humboldt, archaeology, Aztec, drawings, English, Helen Maria Williams, hieroglyphics, history, Inca, London, Mexico, mythology, Peru, Vues des Cordillères

F1219-H91-v.1-title

“The Mexican paintings, a very small number of which has reached our times, excite a double interest, both from the light they throw on the mythology and history of the first inhabitants of America, and the apparent connexion with the hieroglyphical writing of certain nations of the Old Continent. We shall bring together in this work whatever can afford information with respect to the communication which at the most distant periods seem to have taken place between groups of nations separated by deserts, by mountains, or by seas…”

RESEARCHES, CONCERNING THE INSTITUTIONS AND…
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, J. Murray & H. Colburn, 1814
First Edition in English

Translation by Helen Maria Williams of Vues des Cordillères.…, first published in 1810.

Alexander Humboldt’s description of the geography and ruins he observed in Mexico and Peru is one of the earliest archaeological works on the Aztec and Inca civilizations. The work contains plates in black and white, some of which are hand-colored.

Humboldt was no artist, but, like most educated men of his day, he did have drawing skills. He recorded, during his travels, his views of particular places and their natural environment. His drawings became the basis for illustrations for his many publications. Humboldt’s work influenced scientists, but also artists, who traveled the country Humboldt wrote about and illustrated.

Published in two volumes, Rare Books lacks volume 2.

F1219-H91-v.1-Bridges

F1219-H91-v.1-276spread

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F1219-H91-v.1-141spread

Recommended reading:
Measuring the World: A Novel, Daniel Kehlmann, New York: Pantheon Books, 2006
PT2671 E32 V4713 2006
General Collection, Level 2

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, Andrea Wulf, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015
Q143 H9 W85 2015
Browsing Collection, Level 1

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Book of the week — Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral…

16 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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abolitionists, Africa, African-American, Alexander Pope, America, Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, Boston, Boston Slave Market, Cape Verde, copperplate engraving, England, frontispiece, Fula, Gambia, John Hancock, John Milton, John Wheatley, London, Massachusetts, Muslim, Nathaniel Wheatley, Phillis Wheatley, poems, poetry, poets, Scipio Moorhead, Senegal, slave, Susannah Wheatley, Thomas Hutchinson

PS866-W5-1773-Frontis

“Still, wond’rous youth! each noble path pursue,
On deathless glories fix thine ardent view:
Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire
To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire!”
— from “To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works”

POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL…
Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784)
London: Printed for A. Bell…and sold by Messrs. Cox and Berry, Boston, 1773
First edition
PS866 W5 1773

Phillis Wheatley, aged about seven, was bought by John Wheatley of Boston for his wife, Susannah, as a domestic slave, at the Boston Slave Market in 1761. She was probably born in Senegal/Gambia, near Cape Verde, of a Muslim people known as the Fula. She was transported from Africa to Boston on the slave ship, Phillis. The Wheatley family taught her to read and write. She read John Milton and was especially taken with the poetry of Alexander Pope.

Poems on Various Subjects was the first book of poems published by an African American. It gained international fame, and was particularly lauded in England. On a trip to London with Nathaniel Wheatley, she met Benjamin Franklin. Many at the time did not believe that Wheatley, a Negro, could have written this verse. However, Boston intellectuals, including Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts; John Hancock; and Benjamin Rush came to her defense and attested to her authorship. Abolitionists used Wheatley as an example of the artistic and intellectual capabilities of black people.

Susannah Wheatley died a year after this book was published, and John Wheatley freed Phillis, possibly under pressure from others. Although Wheatley became one of the most published American poets of her day,  she died with her sick baby by her side, at the age of thirty, in poverty, and deserted by her husband.

The copperplate engraving frontispiece portrait of Phillis Wheatley is the only known work by enslaved artist, Scipio Moorhead (b. ca. 1750).

Only about one hundred copies of this book are known to exist today.

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Book of the Week — Opticks or, a Treatise of the Reflections…

02 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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color, copper engravings, Isaac Newton, Leibniz, light, London, Opticks, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, rainbows

qc353-n55-title

“God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportions to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them.”

OPTICKS OR, A TREATISE OF THE REFLECTIONS…
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
London: Printed for S. Smith, and B. Walford, 1704
First edition, first issue
QC353 N55

Isaac Newton’s theories and experimentations on color and light grew out of his undergraduate studies. He introduced some of his ideas detailed in Opticks in an article he wrote for the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1671. When Newton presented his concepts about the behavior and characteristics of light, particularly that white light is composed of a spectrum of colors, he posed a number of questions intended to stimulate further research. Opticks explains such phenomena as rainbows and contains two treatises supporting his side of the dispute with Leibniz that it was, indeed, he who discovered calculus.

“In a Letter written to Mr. Leibnitz in the Year 1676, and published by Dr. Wallis, I mentioned a Method by which I had found some general Theorems about squaring Curvilinear Figures, or comparing them with the Conic Sections, or other simplest Figures with which they may be compared. And some Years ago I lent out a Manuscript containing such Theorems, and having since met with some Things copied out of it, I have on this Occasion made it publick, prefixing to it an Introduction and subjoyning a Scholium concerning that Method.”

Nineteen copper-engraved folding plates. This first issue was published anonymously, with only the initials “I.N.” at the end of the Advertisement.

 

qc353-n55-fig8

 

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Book of the Week — Colours of Persia

26 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

airbrush, Barcham Green, Baskerville, Bembo, calligraphy, carborundum, collages, color, crayon, Curzon, cut-outs, drypoint, English, etchings, Farsi, foldouts, Garamond Italic, goatskin, gold foil, Hafez, inlaid leather, Isfahan, Ker Porter, letterpress, linocuts, London, Mashad, onlays, Persia, Prix de Rome, Richard de Bas, Saadi, Shiraz, silver foil, Susan Allix, Tehran, tilework, University of Utah, watercolor, Yazd

n7433-4-a57-c65-2007-cover

Although I have no beauty, colour & perfume
Am I not after all the grass of His garden?”
— Saadi

COLOURS OF PERSIA: PERCEPTIONS, ACCOUNTS…
Susan Allix (b. 1943)
London, 2007
N7433.4 A57 C65 2007

From the artist: “The text is arranged around the headings of five cities – Tehran, Mashad, Yazd, Shiraz and Isfahan. These names are printed in English in 48pt. Garamond Italic and Farsi, which was cast in Tehran. Different typefaces have been used for the different voices of the authors: Ker Porter speaks in Bembo, Curzon in Baskerville, Hafez in varying sizes of Garamond.
Handset and letterpress printed on handmade Barcham Green. The paper for the prints is handmade Richard de Bas. Twenty-six prints, of which seventeen are etchings with drypoint, carborundum and other methods, seven are linocuts, and two are a combination of two or more of these processes. Four prints in black and white, the rest in color, including hand coloring by watercolor, crayon and airbrush, and gold and silver foil.
Additionally illustrated with some foldouts of varying sizes, including some with cut-out shapes. A variety of colored sheets act as interleaving or free colored collages.
Bound in goatskin, some of which has been dyed cobalt blue and yellow. The inlaid leather is also inlaid with waxed paper printed in a style similar to tilework, its semi-transparent quality allowing the title to show through in shadow. The design, based on architectural shapes, has onlays of black, freely-cut leather reminiscent of calligraphy. Within the edition, each binding differs slightly.”
This is the forty-fifth publication of Susan Allix, who has received the Prix de Rome for her book work. Edition of twenty-five copies, signed by the producer. University of Utah copy is no. 9.

n7433-4-a57-c65-2007-i-saw

n7433-4-a57-c65-2007-carpet

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We recommend — Saints at Devil’s Gate: Landscapes along the Mormon Trail

21 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Exhibition, Recommended Reading

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Tags

Angelina Hawkins, Ann Agatha Walker Pratt, art, artist, book, Brigham Young, Byron C. Andreasen, catalog, Church History Museum, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, drawings, editor, emigrant, England, English, engravings, exhibition, France, Frederick Hawkins Piercy, Hampshire, James Linforth, Jersey, John Burton, journals, landscapes, Laura Allred Hurtado, Liverpool, London, Mary Pugh Scott, Millenial Star, Mormon, Mormon Trail, New Orleans, newspaper, Orson Pratt, paintings, Paris, portraiture, Portsea, proselytizing, Royal Academy of Arts, Saints at Devil's Gate, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Valley, ship, Suffolk Street Gallery of the Society of British Artists, The Church Historian's Office Press, Utah, Wallace Stegner, woodcuts

siantscover

“For aren’t we all on a journey that tries our faith, tests our courage, makes us vulnerable, and at times defeats us and blisters our soul?”
— Laura Allred Hurtado

Saints at Devil’s Gate: Landscapes along the Mormon Trail
Laura Allred Hurtado and Byron C. Andreasen
Salt Lake City, UT: The Church Historian’s Office Press, 2016

Catalog to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. The exhibition is free and open to the public and runs through August 2017. An online exhibit is also available at history.lds.org.

ps3537-t316-g36-1964-cover

“…if courage and endurance make a story, if human kindness and helpfulness and brotherly love in the midst of raw horror are worth recording, this…is one of the great tales of the West and of America.”
— Wallace Stegner, quoted in the Curator’s Essay.

e166-p65-titlee166-p65-kanesville

Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley Illustrated with Steel Engravings and Wood Cuts from Sketches…
Frederick Hawkins Piercy (1839-1891)
Liverpool: F. D. Richards; London: Latter-Day Saints’ Book Depot, 1854
First edition
E166 P65

“Frederick Piercy was the eighth of nine children born in Portsea, Hampshire, England. He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on March 23, 1848, and a year later, he married Angelina Hawkins, also a convert. When Piercy was twenty and his wife was expecting their first child, he left for a short mission to Paris, France. In addition to proselytizing, he produced artwork and can be considered a predecessor to the Paris art missionaries who came years later.

“Piercy was an artist know for portraiture and landscapes, and he exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts and at the Suffolk Street Gallery of the Society of British Artists in London prior to leaving for the Salt Lake Valley. In 1853, then twenty-three years old, Piercy left England aboard the emigrant ship Jersey, which was headed for New Orleans. He and James Linforth, an editor for the Mormon newspaper Millennial Star, published a collection of engravings and woodcuts made from Piercy’s drawings, paintings, and journals in the book Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley. Instead of remaining in Utah like many others, Piercy returned to England shortly after his trip. By April 1857, after refusing to return to the Salt Lake Valley at the behest of both Brigham Young and Orson Pratt, Piercy and his wife left the Mormon faith.”
— Laura Allred Hurtado

e166-p65-slce166-p65-gsl

moon
— New Beginnings, John Burton, 2016 oil on canvas, from Saints at Devil’s Gate

“I never shall forget the last day we traveled, and arrived in the Valley… When my eyes rested on the beautiful entrancing sight — the Valley; Oh! how my heart swelled within me, I could have laughed and cried, such a comingling [sic] of emotions I cannot describe…No doubt our valley looks astonishingly beautiful to the strangers who come here now, but it cannot evoke the same emotions as it did to us, poor weary tired, worn out, ragged travelers.” — Ann Agatha Walker Pratt

“Behind us now are the heart aches and many thousands of silent tears that fell on the long unknown trail.” — Mary Pugh Scott
–from Saints at Devil’s Gate

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A fine piece of early Americana and a very fine gift

20 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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almanac, American, American Antiquarian Society, American Revolution, Americana, battles, Benjamin Franklin, bibles, bindery, books, bookstores, Boston, broadsides, Caleb Alexander, Charles River, collector, Concord, dictionaries, Dr. Ronald Rubin, English, Greek, Greek New Testament, history, independence, Isaiah Thomas, John Mill, Lexington, literature, London, Maryland, Massachusetts, medicine, music, Newburyport, newspaper, Nova Scotia, Oxford, pamphlets, paper mill, printer, printing history, rare books, Ronald Rubin, sedition, Vermont, Virgil, war, Worcester, Yale University

title

HE KAINE DIATHEKE, NOVUM TESTAMENTUM
Wigorniae, Massachusettensi: excudebat Isaias Thomas, Jun, 1800
Editio Prima Americana

This is the first American printing of the Greek New Testament, considered a milestone in American printing history.

Isaiah Thomas’ printing shop was dubbed “the sedition factory,” during the American Revolution. Thomas moved his press from Boston across the Charles River to Worcester in order to avoid confiscation by British troupes. His press reassembled, Thomas remained in Worcester for the rest of his life, printing the first reports of the battles of Lexington and Concord (“Americans! – – – Liberty or Death! – – – Join or Die!”) and continuing to print until he sold his business in 1802.

Isaiah Thomas was born in Boston in 1749. Thomas was apprenticed to a printer, at the age of six, after the death of his father. He stayed for ten years, then broke his bond and headed to London, much as Benjamin Franklin had done earlier. Thomas got as far as Nova Scotia, where he stayed to print a newspaper. After six months, he was sent packing because of his anti-Stamp Act actions. After another foray, this time to the south, Thomas returned to Boston to set up his own newspaper, The Massachusetts Spy. At the same time, he began what would become a lucrative printing business, which included an almanac and the Royal American Magazine, in 1774.

After the war for independence was won, Thomas built his press into an enterprise that included a bindery, a paper mill and bookstores from Vermont to Maryland. In 1773, he established the first press in Newburyport, Massachusetts, at the request of some of its citizens. He printed books on medicine, music, history, and literature; and printed spellers, dictionaries, and bibles. Caleb Alexander (1755-1828), a graduate of Yale University, worked with Thomas as editor for his first American editions of Virgil and other works in Greek, including He kaine diatheke. Alexander based his edition on a 1707 Oxford edition by English scholar John Mill (1645-1707).

Thomas retired around 1802, about two years after his printing of He kaine diatheke. He spent the rest of his life collecting printed American works – books, pamphlets, broadsides, almanacs, and newspapers. He used these as primary sources for his History of Printing in America, published in 1810. He donated his collection to the American Antiquarian Society, an institution he organized in order to provide a home for print material from early American history.


This is the most recent of numerous gifts throughout the years from Dr. Ronald Rubin, a collector, like Isaiah Thomas, of early Americana and a very fine friend of Rare Books. Thank you, Dr. Rubin!

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