Search Results: Titles starting with S from Ian Brabner, Rare Americana (ABAA)

[Philadelphia? 1942]. 66pp. Trade Catalog. 7¾ x 9 inches. Profusely illustrated and printed on semi-gloss paper stock. Fine condition. While Second World War Americans were advised to live a life of thrift and frugality, S. Kind & Sons, Philadelphia jewelers, established 1872, suggested an alternative lifestyle. Within this profusely illustrated trade catalog an astonishing variety of rings, jewels, and jewelry for women and men were on offer. If the foregoing did not interest, there were men's and women's wristwatches (Elgin, Gruen, Movado), sterling silver toiletries, bowls, spoons and silverware, plated trays and vegetable dishes. This is a rich visual record of luxury goods. In short, you weren't leaving this Philadelphia jeweler's shop with anything but an item decked out in silver. The front illustrated wrapper shows the firm's targeted audience: a young beautiful woman bedecked in jewels with a mink coat partially slung over her left shoulder.

[Likely Philadelphia., ca. 1900s]. 5 x 8¼ inches. [58] leaves. Oblong, mustard yellow wraps with green printing. Cover soil, musty, else very good. The samples themselves being all in fine condition. A useful artifact for the 20th century American paper historian, this trade catalog offered samples of multi-colored "Type-Writer Papers" - comprised "every possible variety of quality, thickness and finish, required for any character of commercial or legal business, to which we invite the attention of Stenographers, Stationers and Printers." (The Thomas W. Price Co.) The paper types included linen, laid, bond, plated, wove, duplicating and mimeograph and others.

Philadelphia: Printed by B. Graves, for W. Duane, 1805. Second Edition. iv, [5]-96pp. 8vo. Removed; even toning; some separation at final leaf; Very Good. "Sampson" is likely William Sampson (1764-1836) the Irish patriot and lawyer: "Sampson won prominence in the practice of law, the reporting of cases, and propagandist writing. He was admitted to the bar almost immediately after his arrival, and while practising turned his knowledge of stenography to account by publishing a dozen or more verbatim reports of cases which had attracted popular attention. As a lawyer, he achieved high rank chiefly through his eloquence and his vigorous advocacy of personal rights . . .Sampson best deserves to be remembered as the chief exponent of the early movement to codify the common law." (DAB XVI) Authorship has recently been attributed to Jesse Higgins, a wealthy Delaware landowner. (Scharf) Shaw & Shoemaker 9307. Sabin 75924.

New York: Harms Incorporated, (1933). [7]pp. Sheet Music. 12 x 9 inches. Illustrated cover signed in print "jorj." Very Good. Sheet music for the song "Savage Serenade," about a Caribbean island celebration, a musical number featured in the 1933 Broadway musical / murder mystery, Murder at the Vanities, produced by Earl Carroll. The song's lyrics suggest a island drumbeat: "Hear that savage serenade Down there in the Everglade. Just a Bom de de bom bo de de Bom de de bom bo de de Bom bo de de bom bo de de Bom." A musical film of the Broadway show was released in 1934 and included a performance by Black composer and band leader, Duke Ellington, who contributed the song "Ebony Rhapsody" to the film. The lyrics and music of "Savage Serenade" are by Herman Hupfeld, best-known for his song featured in the 1942 film Casablanca, "As Time Goes By."

[Likely New Orleans, late 19th to early 20th century]. 12 x 9 inches. Oil on artist's board. Partial label affixed to the verso of Frost & Adams, located at 37 Cornhill in Boston, known to have been selling artists' materials at least as late as 1898. Unsigned. Varnished, else very good. In this American genre painting attributed to the Swedish-American artist, Thure de Thulstrup (1848-1930), seven African American men, likely in New Orleans, are depicted in a room adjacent to another room marked "Post Office." On one wall, a large illustrated broadside advertises for the "New Orleans" paddlewheel steamboat leaving on "Pier No 5... Thursday Morning March 19." Another broadside is situated nearby, and above both broadsides is a suspended rifle. A seated man wearing a bowler hat and necktie holds a newspaper, listening to an older bearded man with gray hair and glasses who speaks with clasped hands. On the desk in front of him, there are several items: an inkwell, a glass of alcohol (?), a pitcher, a… Read More

[Various items; see description.] A useful archive concerning 19th-century American historians assembled by Steve Schuster, a future Texas printer, publisher and author. Schuster's focus was American historian Jared Sparks and the hagiography of George Washington by Sparks. Through primary and secondary sources, the archive encompasses the activities of or involves: Jared Sparks, George Bancroft, William H. Prescott, William Gammell, Josiah Quincy, George E. Ellis, James Grahame, Peter Force, and Lord Mahon, i.e, Philip Henry Stanhope, 5th Earl Stanhope. Series 1. Letters and Newspapers, 1827-1846 •  Ohio Monitor, Vol. XI, No. 31, Columbus, June 16, 1827. [4]pp. Front page comprises Jared Sparks' letter to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story on Sparks' progress in locating, compiling, and transcribing George Washington's papers (4 columns). Also within: "Proposals for publishing (Under the Direction of the Managers of the Ohio State Colonization Society), A Periodical Work, to be entitled The… Read More

New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1938. 545pp. Publisher's cloth. Some foxing to edges; near fine. Re-issue of political economist Henry George's unfinished final book, first published in 1898. With a "Prefatory Note" by the author's biographer and politician son, Henry George, Jr.

Boston: Boston Amateur Scientific Society, June 1877 - March 31, 1882. Three volumes in one. 84pp; 96pp; and 107pp. Modestly illustrated. Half sheep with marbled boards. Deaccessioned from the Observatory at Haverford College with their nineteenth-century bookplate and various library markings. Loss to head of very-rubbed spine and edges of corners of both boards. Tight and sound and with clean contents. First three volumes, complete, of this monthly journal for amateur scientists published by the Boston Amateur Scientific Society, later the Boston Scientific Society. The contents are devoted to astronomy and meteorology: comets and meteors and planetary and stellar observations. Each volume is separately indexed and there is some notice of local natural history societies and observatories. Includes the Constitution of the Boston Scientific Society. Editor John Ritchie, Jr. was an authority on the orbits of comets and a proponent of the systematic search for comets. To facilitate the transmission of… Read More

Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, (1931), unpaginated. 4¾ x 6½ inches. Cloth spine, color pictorial boards, without scarce dust jacket. Rubbing along edges of boards, else near fine. First edition after publication in The Delineator, also issued in wrappers. A charmingly-illustrated ABC's of Flappers-era life and leisure on the high seas. "A is The Alphabet boarding the ship. / They have promised to write an account of the trip." A much-nicer copy than typically seen.

[San Francisco]: Second Coming Press, [1973]. Unpaginated. 8½ x 5½ inches. Softcover. Closed tear at fore-edge of upper cover with crude tape mend on verso; an otherwise very good copy. This copy appears to have a forged signature of Bukowski on the Acknowledgments page. A faint tracing of his last name is underlaid beneath "Charles Bukowski" which is written above it.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967. 389pp. First Edition. Illustrated. Publisher's cloth with dust jacket. Endsheets are sunned and front endpaper with small sticker shadow. A very good copy. A comprehensive study of the history of race and relations in Washington, D.C. "Mrs. Green has here recorded the ups and downs of the relations between the races from the city's founding at the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the 1960's..." (dust jacket).

New York: Random House, 1946. 622pp. First edition, first printing. Very good in publisher's cloth binding and dustwrapper. Faintly shelf-cocked and jacket's spine panel toned. Edited and with an introduction by by Carl Van Vechten. With stamp to bottom margin of title page: "Erich Itor and Frida Kahn Collection." Erich Itor Kahn was a German-Jewish exilee and composer who came to America during the era of Nazism.

[San Diego, Calif.:] Dept. of Reference and Instructional Services, Malcolm A. Love Library, San Diego State University, 1974. iii, 16pp. 8½ x 5½ inches. Pictorial wrappers. Name on front cover. Publisher's, partly-printed transmittal slip laid in. Very Good. A 1970s bibliography of Chicano publications of note issued by the Malcolm A. Love Library at San Diego State University in California.

Washington, D.C.: The Minorities Publishers, 1945. vi, [1], 112pp. Octavo. Publisher's blue cloth with gilt titling; without jacket; a near fine copy. First edition of this examination of the Versailles Treaty that ended the First World War with a particular focus on the "Armenia Question." The author, Rayford Whittingham Logan, built his career as an African-American historian and proponent of Pan-Africanism. Logan enjoyed a long tenure at Howard University as a history professor. He also served on FDR's "Black Cabinet" and notably drafted the language that would become Roosevelt's executive order prohibiting the exclusion of African Americans from the military in the Second World War.

[St. Louis:] The Ethical Society of St. Louis, Sheldon Memorial, [1906?]. First edition. iv, 116pp. Sm. 8vo. Publisher's cloth. Light wear to spine along joints; Very Good. A compilation of American and Continental poetry on uplifting themes by Walter Lorenzo Sheldon (1858-1907), founder of the Ethical Society of St. Louis. With Index of Authors. Inscribed in 1945: "To Mrs. ____. In love and appreciation for your loyalty to he Cause we both love with all our heart, and all one strength, and all our mind. Mae Lindahl."

St. Paul: W.W. Price & Co., Printers, [1887]. 11, [1]pp. 7 x 4¼ inches. Printed wrappers. Author's hand-corrections. Wrappers with splitting, chipped at head and tail of spine; else very good. Presentation copy, inscribed by Whipple to Robert Charles Winthrop (1809-1894), former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who was active in the Episcopal church in Boston. A very scarce ordination sermon preached in 1887 by Henry Benjamin Whipple (1822-1901), the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota. Bishop Whipple spoke on the occasion of Rev. Elisha Smith Thomas' consecration as Assistant Bishop of Kansas. In 1899, Thomas became the second Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas. Whipple describes Kansas as "not a whit behind the fairest portion of our [nation's] goodly heritage. It will be the home of millions. If the entire population of the Eastern and Middle States was placed within its borders it would not be as densely populated as England is to-day. In the life of our brother the fortunes… Read More

Leicester: Printed by Hori Brown, 1815, 37, [1]pp., stitched and untrimmed, as issued. Dust-soiled; foxed; overall, very good. First and sole edition of the very first literary production of this prolific author, clergyman, exponent of New England Theology and professor in Bangor Theological Seminary; "a list of his writings includes some fifty-eight separate publications on biographical, historical, and religious subjects, about forty of which are books." (DAB) Pond's sermon was given by him when he was twenty-three years old. Shaw and Shoemaker 35664.

Boston: Mass. Sabbath School Society, 13 Cornhill., 1862. 8vo. 12pp., sewn. Publisher's printed wrappers. Small stain to front with 19th-century name of Mrs. Asa Wade; brief separation of wraps; very good. A Civil War-era eulogy for Carolina S. Fitz who served as a Sunday school teacher and was the wife of the Reverend Daniel Fitz of the South Creek. OCLC records 5 unique holdings: AAS, Peabody, Cornell, Godfrey Memorial Library, American Congregational Association.

New York: Pantheon Books, (1977). First American Edition. 123, [1]pp. Sm. 8vo. Cloth; dust jacket.  Hardcover. Illustrated with stills from the movie. Small remainder mark to top-edge of book else near fine in a dustwrapper in like condition. Screen play of Ingmar Bergman's second English-language film, released in 1977 and starring David Carradine and Liv Ullmann.

Knoxville, Tennessee: 1869, 1870 & 1872. In all, 11pp. 5 x 7¾ to 10½ x 8½ inches. All very good. A Vermont native, George Andrews (1826-1889) was appointed as a justice to the Tennessee Supreme Court by Governor W.G. Brownlow in 1868. He served for two years. Subsequently, Andrews was U.S. district attorney for East Tennessee and a University of Tennessee trustee. Contents 1.  Knoxville. March 27, 1869, James E. Merwin Esq. in St. Louis. [1¼]pp. Andrews inquires about acquiring a book on the Andrews family genealogy and notes his friendship with General John Eaton (1829-1906), editor of the Memphis Daily Post. 2.  Knoxville. April 5, 1869, to Alfred Andrews Esq. [1]p. Andrews mentions "Maj. Merwin" (see above), asks again about a published genealogy and provides brief details about his immediate family. 3.  Knoxville. April 5, 1869, to Alfred Andrews Esq. [2¼]pp. Andrews provides information about his siblings, noting that he is considering submitting a portrait for Alfred's proposed genealogy… Read More