Search Results: Titles starting with C from Alembic Rare Books

Herne Hill, London: A. Mason, c. 1900-1910. Cabinet card (165 x 108 mm). Gold bevelled edges. Remnants of an old sticker or ticket next to the photographer's address. A few tiny spots and a minor scratch. Very good condition. Cabinet card depicting a female cyclist. The cabinet card, essentially a larger version of the carte de visite, was a popular format for portraiture from the 1860s until the early years of the 20th century, when Brownies and other affordable cameras made it possible for people to take their own photographs. Meanwhile, the introduction of the safety bicycle in the 1890s had created a wave of interest in the sport, and women were especially keen on the freedom and power they offered. Some suffragettes argued that they could help upend traditional gender relations, and they contributed significantly to the reform of women's dress. Suffragettes or not, cabinet cards photographs of women posing with their bicycles - usually dressed to the nines as in this example - became popular.… Read More

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947. Soft cover. Very Good. Octavo. Original cream wrappers printed in brown. 2 plates from photographs, equations and charts within the text. Ownership signature to upper cover, title and author's name written in ink on the spine. Wrappers tanned, crease to lower cover also slightly affecting final ten leaves. A very good copy. First edition, first impression of "the first booklet on electronic computers separately published by a conventional publisher, and also one of the earliest discussions of how these machines could be used in scientific calculations" (Origins of Cyberspace 649). In addition to his significant contributions to ballistics and quantum theory, British mathematician Douglas Hartree (1897-1958) was a leader in efforts to automate scientific calculations. He was "involved in the development of the digital electronic computer, which emerged from wartime attempts to automate calculation further... In 1946 Hartree's advice was sought in the… Read More

[Olympia, WA], 1935. Silver gelatin composite photograph (250 x 200 mm) with small tear-off monthly calendar for 1936. Inscribed "Merry Christmas, The Bowmans". A few minor nicks and spots at the edges. Excellent, unused condition. A remarkable piece of early aviation ephemera, this calendar was produced as a Christmas greeting by the early female aviator Marguerite (Martie) Bowman (1901-1985) and her husband Leslie, also a pilot. It depicts Bowman flying in her WACO INF biplane, registration number NC625Y, in formation with two others, and includes portraits of Bowman, her husband, and their daughter Larnie Bowman Allen. We have learned from one of the Bowmans' grandchildren that Larnie joined the family profession, becoming a wing-walker at eight and soloing at twelve. The Bowmans established an aviation business together and, during the 1920s, 30s and 40s, Martie Bowman ferried planes from factories and regularly participated in air races. She competed in the 1930 Women's Dixie Air Derby from… Read More

London: Joseph Johnson, 1787. Duodecimo (155 x 95mm). Contemporary tree calf, spine gilt in compartments, marbled endpapers. 1810 ownership inscription to the verso of the front free endpaper, pencilled notes of a similar date to the verso of the rear blank. Binding lightly rubbed at the extremities, the corner of B6 torn, not affecting the text, light spotting to the contents. Very good condition. Third edition of this charming little book on the changing of the seasons from month to month by the "physician and man of letters" John Aiken (1747-1822) (Hahn, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature). Aiken charming combines practical knowledge of nature and gardening with literary references. For April he writes: "This month gives the most perfect image of Spring; for its vicissitudes of warm gleams of sunshine, and gentle showers, have the most wonderful effects in hastening that universal springing of the vegetable tribes, from whence the season derives its appellation. April generally… Read More

London: Chappuis, [between 1859 and 1871]. Cabinet card (103 x 62 mm). Photographer's ticket to the verso. Just a couple of tiny spots. Excellent condition. A lovely carte de visite depicting the Crystal Palace in its permanent home at Sydenham sometime after 1856, when the Brunel water towers, one of which is visible in the photo, were erected. The structure was originally built to house the Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations (the Great Exhibition) in Hyde Park in 1851. Popular acclaim saw it preserved and reopened in Sydenham in 1854, but it was destroyed by a fire in 1936. This card bears the ticket of photographer Paul Emile Chappuis (1816-1887), whose Fleet Street studio operated between 1859 and 1871. Chappuis was also an inventor who held several patents on reflectors that would allow light into buildings that would otherwise require gaslights during the day. The firm that he set up to manufacture them was in operation until the Second World War.

Genetics, 1921. 44 page offprint. Original grey wrappers printed in black, hidden staples. Contemporary pencilled note to the upper wrapper. Ink stamp of the University of Bonn on the verso of the title. Wrappers very lightly rubbed and toned, with small discoloured spots from the staples. Excellent condition. The uncommon offprint of the dissertation of geneticist and scientific administrator Frieda Blanchard, née Cobb (1889-1977), the first scientist to demonstrate Mendelian inheritance in a reptile. Cobb's father, Nathan Augustus Cobb, was a pioneering plant pathologist who involved his daughters in his work, particularly in their home laboratory. "Frieda developed an enthusiasm for science and a love for plants and animals. In Hawaii, where her father studied the diseases of sugar cane, Frieda worked in the laboratory he organised" (Ogilvie p. 141). She attended Radcliffe College and completed her bachelor's at the University of Illinois in 1916. "In the fall of 1916, after a summer helping… Read More

Morrisville, NY: printed at the Madison Observer Office, 1881. Tall octavo. Original brown cloth, titles to upper boar gilt, triple fillets blocked in blind, edges dyed red. White abrasion and speckled dampstain to the upper board, cloth a little rubbed at the extremities with some small nicks at the edges of the boards, contents very faintly toned. A very good copy. First edition of this uncommon catalogue of the Greene Smith Museum of birds and their nests and eggs. Greene Smith (1841-1880) was the son of abolitionist Gerrit Smith and a keen sportsman, amateur taxidermist, and professor of ornithology at Cornell. He founded his museum in Peteroboro, New York in 1863 to house the thousands of specimens of birds, eggs, and nests he had collected – nicknamed the Bird House, it was three stories tall and fitted out with luxuries such as central heating, a mahogany staircase, and marble fixtures, and the collection of hummingbirds alone was estimated to be worth $75,000. Smith died in 1886 while… Read More

Liverpool: Matthews Brothers, Printers, [c. 1870s]. 64 page pamphlet. Original light blue wrappers printed in black. Engraving depicting the museum on the lower wrapper, 1 engraving within the text. Wrappers rubbed, dulled, and spotted, minor crease to the upper corner slightly affecting the contents. Very good condition. The rare catalogue of the Liverpool Museum of Anatomy, describing in detail the Museum's contents and policies, and illustrating its interior by an engraving on the lower cover. The Liverpool Museum of Anatomy was one of a number of such museums in the UK and US that specialised in wax anatomical models and, unlike many of the museums of professional medical organisations, were open to the public. Though the stated goal was always education, particularly regarding reproduction and the dangers of sexual vice, these museums also traded on the shock or titillation value of their exhibits and some were targeted by the medical establishment as purveyors of vice and quackery. The… Read More

London: The Batchworth Press, 1952. Large octavo. Original blue cloth, title to spine gilt. Colour frontispiece and 52 black and white plates. A couple of tiny pencil notes in the margins, leaf of manuscript notes loosely inserted. Spine rolled, cloth lightly rubbed at the extremities. An excellent copy, the contents clean. First edition, first impression of this comprehensive history of chemistry's role in the Industrial Revolution by a professor of chemistry at the University of Aberdeen. A very nice copy.

London & Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1855. 2 volumes, octavo (178 x 113 mm). Contemporary brown half calf, spines gilt in compartments, red morocco labels, marbled sides, endpapers, and edges. Steel engravings throughout the text. H7 and 8 unopened. Lacking the ads normally present. Bindings rubbed, occasional light spotting to contents. A very good set. First complete edition of this popular Victorian work on the chemistry of the everyday, published in two volumes the year after the first volume appeared. Author James F. W. Johnston (1796-1855) was a chemist and lecturer, and together with David Brewster one of the founders of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. His association with J. J. Berzelius "brought him prestige and fuelled his interest in the way atoms might be arranged in compounds; though chemical atomic theory was still very hypothetical in the 1830s, some inferences could be made. In 1837 he wrote an important report for the British Association meeting at… Read More

Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1911. Octavo. Original grey wrappers printed in black. 4 plates of which 1 is folding and the others are double-page. Ownership signature "Ric" and short note on the upper wrapper. Wrappers a little toned at the extremities, lightly rubbed, lower corner bumped, contents faintly toned. A very good copy. Offprint, presentation copy inscribed by the author on the upper wrapper, "Schrader, with kind regards of the author". Cell biologist Kristine Bonnevie (1872-1949) was Norway's first female professor and the first woman member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences. She studied with chromosome researcher Theodor Boveri in Germany, and was awarded a PhD in 1906 for her study of sex cells. "The problem of chromosome halving in the sex cells was not well understood at the time, and her work challenged the classic work of the Norwegian cytologists Alette and Kristian Emil Schreiner. In response to criticism by the Schreiners about her chromosomal work, Bonnevie went to Columbia… Read More

Indio, CA: Shields Date Gardens, 1952. 40-page, wire-stitched pamphlet. Original buff wrappers printed in brown and orange with an image of the rising sun over a desert landscape to the upper wrapper and a cartoon of a knight pointing to the Shields farm on the lower wrapper. Illustrated throughout with photographs and maps. Partially erased price and a little light dampstain to the cover. Occasional tiny spots to contents, which are faintly toned. A clean and fresh copy in excellent condition. First edition of this charming tourist booklet promoting the Coachella Valley and Shields Date Gardens, the famous "home of the date shake" on Highway 111 in Indio, California. Date agriculture was introduced to the Coachella Valley when the US Department of Agriculture set up an experimental station in the region in 1904. "In the following decades, crop production grew exponentially, from approximately 100,000 pounds in 1919 to 1 million pounds in 1926, and then by 1955 to 48 million pounds of dates"… Read More

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, April 1943. Large octavo. Original buff cloth, titles to spine and upper board in red. Illustrations throughout the text. Ownership inscriptions to the front free endpaper, manuscript notes and underlining throughout, a few pieces of related material taped-in and loosely inserted, cloth rubbed, scratched, and marked, large gauge from the spine, which is also rolled, wear at the corners and spine ends. A good copy. Second impression of the second edition of this classic textbook that was originally published in 1922. A battered copy that is of interest for the extensive notes and other signs of use by university students. The ownership inscriptions on the front free endpaper are "A. Graham Zool '48" and "Sydeny Rosen Meds 49". The text is full of notes and underlining in multiple pencil colours and by different hands; some of the illustrations have been coloured in for study purposes; and material has also been taped in and loosely inserted, including a… Read More

Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997. Tall quarto. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and T-rex design to upper board in black, yellow endpapers embossed with patterns of dinosaur scales. With the dust jacket. 8 double-sided colour plates, greyscale illustrations throughout the text. Just a single tiny crease at the edge of the dust jacket. An exceptional copy. First edition, first printing. A beautiful copy of one of the most scholarly and best-selling of the dinosaur encyclopedias published during the "dinomania" of the 1990s. The Complete Dinosaur, copiously illustrated and accessible to both professional and popular audiences, contains forty-three essays by leading geologists and palaeontologists on dinosaur physiology, behaviour, and evolution; the history of palaeontology around the world; and the appearance of dinosaurs in popular culture. The Quarterly Review of Biology described it as "the most readable and interesting book on many aspects of dinosaurs that I… Read More

Warsaw & Kraków: Zak ad Paleobiologii, Polska Akademia Nauk, 1981. 11-page offprint, perfect bound. Original olive wrappers printed in black. 2 plates, illustrations within the text. Some minor creasing at the spine and light rubbing along the edges, small spot to the title page. Very good condition. An uncommon offprint announcing results from the important Polish-Mongolian Palaeontological Expeditions. These expeditions to the Gobi, which were led by Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska between 1965 and 1971, resulted in the excavation of thirty-five tons of fossils. They "added greatly to our understanding of the diversity of dinosaurs. The material collected in those few years provided material for major portions of the careers of five or six Polish scientists" and "the scientific descriptions of dinosaurs that soon began to flow from the expeditions were almost exclusively written by Polish women, women who up to then had published on Paleozoic invertebrates" (Dodson, "Polish Women in the Gobi – In Loving… Read More

Ottowa: Government Printing Bureau, 1917. Octavo. Original grey wrappers printed in black. 7 engraved folding plates, 4 illustrations from photos and 38 engravings within the text. Ink stamps of the Geological Society of London to the upper wrapper and title. Ownership in stamp of William P. Ogilvie to the upper wrapper. Wrappers a little rubbed and dulled, spine panel slightly toned, hinges reinforced with tape, paper flaw to the edge of the front blank. A very good copy. First edition of this important and copiously illustrated monograph that was one of the first publications to illustrate a dinosaur in non-standing positions. Author Lawrence Lambe (1863-1919) "was one of the first dinosaur hunters to discover the richness of the Red Deer River beds in Alberta around the turn of the century, but he was not an avid field worker, and he moved on to become Chief Paleontologist for the Geological Survey of Canada. in 1912 he commissioned the Sternberg family to collect dinosaurs for Canada, and it was… Read More

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine in silver. With the dust jacket. 2 double-sided colour plates, illustrations throughout the text. Jacket very lightly rubbed, with a contemporary ISBN sticker to the lower panel. An excellent copy. First edition, first impression and a very attractive copy. This volume by leading palaeobiologist Simon Conway Morris describes the discovery and interpretation of fossils from the famed Burgess Shale in Canada, which dates from the Cambrian period 545 million years ago. Prior to this time most living things were loosely organised colonies of single-celled organisms, but the Cambrian saw a dramatic increase in diversity, with the evolution of many new body types and survival strategies. The majority of animal and plant body plans we know today evolved during the Cambrian, and this time period has been a source of mystery and scientific debate since the early 19th century. The Burgess Shale is a rich source of Cambrian… Read More

Chicago: the Hollister Press for the Mead Cycle Company, [early 20th-century]. 12 page advertising booklet, stapled self-wraps. Colour and two-tone chromolithographs. 2 horizontal creases from folding, some spotting and dulling to the cover. Very good condition. An attractive, early 20th-century advertising booklet for Crusader Bicycles by the Mead Cycle Company of Chicago. It includes two wonderful chromolithographs, including a double page spread depicting the Advance Model Crusader de Luxe for $19.85 and the Crusader Coaster-Brake Special for $17.80. The upper cover advertises their policies, including free shipping, a free 30 day trial, and five year guarantee, and there are also ads for a variety of accessories. "What more do you want in a wheel? What greater assurance could you ask in buying a bicycle? We are putting our priceless reputation behind these two latest Crusader Models and behind the unqualified statement that when you buy one you are making the best bicycle selection and the wisest… Read More

Edinburgh: William Whyte and Co., 1837. Hardcover. Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine gilt. Contemporary ownership inscription to front pastedown. Cloth partially faded and a little rubbed, with small worn spots at the ends of the spine and corners, just a little light spotting to contents. A very good copy. The title page states that this is the fifth edition, however, we have been unable to trace any earlier editions in the usual institutional catalogues. This small book on moral intelligence contains the ownership inscription of a young woman, Anne Elizabeth Le Mesurier, most likely the same Anne Elizabeth who genealogical records indicate was born to Thomas and Margaret Le Mesurier in 1814. Books on morality were an important part of the education of most middle and upper-class young people during the 19th-century. This text, however, seems directed more towards boys and men, with a focus on mental and emotional discipline, intellectual life, and… Read More