Our trunks have been collected and are on their way to the 45th California International Antiquarian Book Fair at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena. We will be in Booth 615. The fair will be held Friday through Sunday, 10-12 February. Here is a link to a selection of the book books we are bringing to exhibit :

http://www.jamescumminsbookseller.com/images/upload/California2012.pdf

If you would like a ticket to the  fair, please let me know by e-mail,  henry@jamescumminsbookseller.com

See you there!

[HWW]

The second catalogue, Holiday 2011, is an unnumbered supplement to our series with a good mix of Christmas material, inclduing a mid-seventeenth century ‘Answer to Sixteen Quaeres’; a fine letter of Charles Dickens on his plans to perform from his ‘Christmas Carol’ to an audience of three thousand; and woodcut Christmas cards by Roger Fry.

Please let us know if you would like to receive our catalogues (whether in printed form or as a pdf file).

(With this post the James Cummins Bookseller blog announces a schedule of weekly updates to amuse, entice, or alert you.)

244152 (FLORIDA) Spinner, Francis E.  Autograph Letter, Signed (“F.E. Spinner”) to Angling author George Dawson, dated Jacksonville, Florida, Feby. 19, 1876, discussing Dawson’s book of “fish letters” (Pleasures of Angling … [1876]), recounting a fish tale, and praising Florida winters.  4 pp., pen and ink on a single folded sheet.  12mo, Jacksonville, Florida:  February 19, 1876.  Old folds. Fine.  $1,000

Francis E. Spinner (1802-1890) served as Treasurer of the United States under Presidents Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant. During the Civil War, “he was the first governmental administrator to turn to women. He vigorously defended their employment against critics, hired over one hundred, paid them well by the standards of the time, and insisted on their continued employment after the war. [...] When a new secretary of the treasury in 1875 assumed control over the appointment of clerks, however, Spinner feared that dishonest people might be hired and he would be held responsible. He resigned and moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he enjoyed a vigorous outdoor life until his death in that city” (ANB)

In the angling world, Spinner is notable as the recipient of letters from Oliver Gibbs, Jr., published as Lake Pepin Fish-Chowder (1869). In retirement in Florida, he writes to George Dawson, editor of the Albany Evening Journal and a noted American angling author, whose Pleasures of Angling with Rod and Reel (1876) is the first American book devoted to fly fishing.  Spinner writes, “I am so glad to learn that you have been persuaded to publish your fish letters, in book form … when yours comes out, it will be read with pleasure.” He then goes on to describe fishing for trout on McGirt’s Creek, a tributary of the St. Johns River, and catching a cat fish of 18-1/2 pounds “on one of Chapman’s ‘No. 4 Minnow bait’ … I mention this, because I cannot learn from anyone, that a cat fish was ever known before to strike at artificial bait.”

Spinner concludes lyrically, “The orange, and other of the citrus family, are in bloom now … Whoever, at the North, that can afford to, and who has nothing else to do, and that does not spend his winters in this Elysium, is to be pitied. Do come.”

An excellent letter with outstanding content.

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The Sporting Department marks the beginning of the warm season with a charming little book from the north country. How many of us leave such a record of our vacation activities ?

219454 SHIBLEY, Fred Warner.  Aspinwall Island.  With 12 photographic plates. 167, [1] pp.  8vo, New York:  Privately Printed [printed by the De Vinne Press], 1916.  First edition.  Red cloth titled in gilt, pictorial onlay to upper board. Faintest bit of toning to the spine, fine.  Bruns S140.  $500

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The firm will be exhibiting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Tuesday 21 June, at the ABAA Booksellers Showcase at “In the Hurricane’s Eye: Challenges of Collecting in the 21st Century”, the 52nd Annual Preconference of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries. To our friends in the library world, this is an invitation to come say hello. We will be bringing a selection from our inventory and some great new arrivals. [HWW]

]]> http://www.jamescumminsbookseller.com/news/?feed=rss2&p=190 0 http://www.jamescumminsbookseller.com/news/?p=179 http://www.jamescumminsbookseller.com/news/?p=179#comments Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:29:48 +0000 jamescummins http://www.jamescumminsbookseller.com/news/?p=179

James Cummins Bookseller will be exhibiting at the 51st Annual New York Antiquarian Book Fair, April 8-10 (with a preview on the night of April 7th), at the Park Avenue Armory.

As always, we’ll be bringing a tempting assortment of our stock, with many new offerings. We’ll be posting a list of what we’re bringing along shortly. Click here for a preview.

Come stop by our booth, and don’t forget to visit our shop, around the corner from the fair at 699 Madison Ave.

250365 [COLE, Henry (pseud. “Felix Summerly”)].  A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.  Hand-colored lithographed card, triptych depicting a family gathered around a dinner table toasting the recipient in the center panel, the side panels showing scenes of Christmas charity. Addressed to “His old young friends Emma & Agnes” from the designer of the card, “J. C. Horsley, Xmasse 1843”.  (3 1/4 x 5 in.; 83 x 127 mm), London:  [Joseph Cundall for] Summerly’s Home Treasury Office, [December 1843].  Lightly soiled, creased across upper right corner, in custom cloth folding box.  Price on application.

“While Germany can claim credit for the custom of the Christmas tree, the prize for the first Christmas card goes to England”(Elliott, Inventing Christmas, p. 85).

The first Christmas card, one of 20 or 21 known to exist. This card signed by its creator, artist John Calcott Horsley and dated 1843.

— — — —

And a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You, from all of us at James Cummins Bookseller.

“I sit upon this old grey stone / And dream my time away.”

244793 WORDSWORTH, William [and Samuel Taylor Coleridge]. Lyrical Ballads, With Pastoral and Other Poems. [iv], lxiv, [2], 200, [4]; [iv], 250 pp. 2 vols. 8vo, London: Printed for T.N. Longman and O. Rees … by Biggs and Cottle, 1802. Second complete edition, i.e.: third edition of vol. I, and second edition of vol. I. 19th-century half red morocco and marbled boards, spine gilt-lettered. Rubbed, with some scuffing to spines. Contemporary ownership signatures to front paste-down. Bookplate. Healey 12 & 13; Tinker 2332. $6,500

“— Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
“Conversing as I may
“I sit upon this old grey stone
“And dream my time away”

Wordsworth’s poetical object, as articulated in the Preface, “to chuse incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men”, was a transformative break with the empty rhetorical conventions of the previous century. On these grounds, Lyrical Ballads remains perpetually relevant. It includes his “Lines Written a few miles above Tintern Abbey …” and his friend Coleridge’s “The Ancient Mariner”.

The rare second edition of the two-volume Lyrical Ballads. With several important changes from the 1800 edition — the Preface is expanded by 20 pages, Coleridge’s “The Dungeon” and Wordsworth’s “A Character” and “Lines Written Near Richmond” are withdrawn, and the appendix on poetic diction is included for the first time.

James Cummins Bookseller has a new catalogue available, number 106, Sporting Books. Please let us know if you would like to receive a copy. Even while the catalogue was in press, the Sporting Department was busy searching out new material — both the rare and the ordinary — and cataloguing diligently. One book not in the catalogue — but travelling west for  display in Seattle — is a charming copy of a classic of American sporting travel:

Inscribed by Louis Rhead to Kit Clarke, with a Drawing

249621 (RHEAD, Louis) Crandall, Lathan A.  Days in the Open.  Illustrated from photographs and with decorations by Louis Rhead.  8vo, New York:  Fleming H. Revell Company, [1914].  First edition.  Green cloth stamped in black and in gilt. Spine and covers somewhat faded, else very good plus. With a fine ink drawing by Louis Rhead on the flyleaf, and inscribed by him to angling author Kit Clarke.  Wetzel p. 186; Bruns C187.  SOLD

A notable American angling work, describing several trips to Maine, Michigan, Florida, Washington; as well as Prince Edward Island, British Columbia, and the Georgian Bay in Canada. The Rev. Dr. Crandall was a minister from Minneapolis; his narratives identify the participants as the Preacher, the Business Man, and the Doctor, and so forth. Bruns notes that the great angling collector Henry A. Sherwin accompanied Crandall on one of the trips (presumably on the Nepigon, where the Business Man was among the party).

Here with a fine angling association: inscribed by the book’s illustrator, Louis Rhead, to Kit Clarke, author of Where the Trout Hide (1889) and The Practical Angler (1892). Rhead’s “decorations” and illustrations appear throughout the volume, including many full page scenes. Rhead (1857-1926)  was himself a notable angling author whose many books include The Speckled Brook Trout (1902) and American Trout Stream Insects (1916), which remains a landmark of American sport as the first systematic work on the subject, listing and illustrating the insects and giving details of the seasons at which they are encountered. Wetzel called him “a pioneer in this field … Rhead’s work in this field so far surpassed the earlier fragmentary material written on the subject … a gifted and clever artist” (pp. 72-3).

A choice association copy.

246093 (JAMES, Henry) Sargent, John Singer.  Portrait of Henry James.  Silver print  after the oil portrait by Sargent.  330 x 265 mm. (13 x 10 1/2 in.), [London:  1913].  One of 300 copies SIGNED by both James and Sargent on the mount.  Mounted and framed. Fine.  $7,500

“Nothing but the impression. I took that here” — he tapped his heart. “I’ve never lost it.”
“Then your manuscript ?”
“Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand.” He hung fire again. “A woman’s.
She has been dead these twenty years. She sent me the pages in question before she died.”
— Henry James, ‘The Turn of the Screw’

Sargent’s painting of James, justly celebrated as one of the great literary portraits, was commissioned by James’ friends for his seventieth birthday. The original was given by James to the National Portrait Gallery in London.  James was so touched by the generosity of the 300 subscribers, that “he arranged for all of them to receive a photograph of the Sargent portrait signed on the left side by Sargent and on the right by Himself. Sargent’s name has all but faded from such of these as survive; but James’s name, with its customary largeness and boldness, remains visible.” (Edel, The Master: 1901-1916, p. 486).  Edel aptly notes “a great feeling of life in the portrait. The Master is caught in one of the moments of his greatness — that is, a moment of ‘authority.’”

It is worth a mention that Sargent’s signature is fully visible in our copy.

We offer two early examples of the center-piece style, both Latin translations of Aristotle, bound ca. 1570, probably in Paris or Lyon:

42458. ARISTOTLE. Ars disserendi ex comparatione omnium interpretum, et accurata observatione sententiæ, de integro facta, per Jac. Carpentarium…Secunda Edita, Longe Emendatior.  ff. 14; 48; 156; 130.  4to, Paris:  Jacques Du Puy, 1572.  Second edition, revised and enlarged, of the Latin translation by Jacques Charpentier of the 6 Treatises on Logic constituting the Organon.  Contemporary calf with large gilt arabesque on both upperand lower covers, back joint expertly repaired. Some minor waterstaining to preliminaries, otherwise very good.  Not in Hoffman; not in Adams; not in RLIN.  $2,000
Contains Charpentier’s Latin verison and commentaries of CATEGORIAE; DE INTERPRETATIONE; ANALYTICA PRIORA; ANALYTICA POSTERIORA; ARS TOPICA; and DE REPREHENSIONIBUS SOPHISTICIS.

42461. ARISTOTLE. Aristotelis eorum quae physica sequuntur, sive Metaphysicorum, ut vocant, libri tredecim.  160 leaves.  4to, Paris:  Dionysius à Prato, 1568.  Contemporary calf with large gilt arabesque centerpiece on both upper and lower covers, additionally stamped in gilt IEHAN (front cover) and MARCHIAND (lower cover). Rebacked preserving original spine. Fresh, fine copy.  Not in Adams; not in RLIN or OCLC; one copy in Bibliothèque Nationale (FRBNF30027525).  $2,000
Rare Latin translation of the Metaphysics by a French Benedictine Scholar, Joachim Perion, (1499-1599), first published in 1554. An interesting copy, with ownership inscription on title of “Philiberti Amadeo Machet”, and the very unusual covers, gilt-stamped with the owner’s name in gilt.
Amédée Philibert Machet was the canon & dean of Notre-Dame in Annecy, and librarian to the Duke of Savoy in Turin in the late 17th century.