James Cummins Bookseller

[Chicago]: “Privately Printed at the Sign of the Holly Wreath”, 1936, 1935.

Price: $3,500.00

About the item

UNIQUE COPY. Typescript within ruled borders, pen-and-ink and colored drawings and decorations, all done by the author. 3 vols. 4to. Manuscripts for two major scholarly works on Christmas. Bound in quarter red-morocco, gilt holly-leaf ornaments, over vellum boards, spines gilt with green leather title labels t.e.g., by the Monastery Hill Bindery, Chicago. Red cloth open-faced slipcase. Provenance: Jock Elliott, author of Inventing Christmas (2002). Exhibited: A Ha! Christmas (Grolier Club, 1999-2000).

Item #308667

The author's own manuscripts of two major works on the bibliography and history of Christmas, with substantial content and beautifully ornamented with colorful illustrations and polychrome borders. The Tryal of Old Father Christmas is on English handmade etching paper. Christmas Literature, later titled Christmas Through the Centuries, was published in 1938 by bookseller Walter M. Hill, Chicago in an edition of 500 copies by the Red Hart Press. The Tryal of Old Father Christmas, a history of the controversies about celebrating the holiday, as well as an edition of Josiah King's text, was published in 1937 in an edition of 500 copies by the Torch Press.
Walter W. Schmauch (1882-1957) was a Law Professor at the University of Chicago; his typescript English translation and study, The Nuremberg Chronicle, its history and illustrations. Being the Liber chronicarum of Doctor Hartmann Schedel A.D. 1493 (1941) is preserved in the Free Library of Philadelphia. He translated several other works from German.