Next is a group of books that strike me as odd in some fashion. Three have odd titles: English Syntitholgy, by James Brown, 12mo., Boston and Philadelphia 1842; The Kirografik Teecher, by John Brown Smith, 8vo., Amherst 1878; Epeögraphy, by Joseph B. Manning, Boston 1829. Then there are books with odd contents, an example of which is James Ruggles' A Universal Language, Cincinnati 1829. Its attempt to make an artificial language "formed on philosophical and analogical principles" yields a welter of jarring print that is rough going to say the least. And an odd but charming imprint belongs to Francis Butler's The Spanish Teacher, 16mo., published in New York in 1849 by the Havana Segar Mart, 205 Water-Street.
There are many books by and about the venerable (but in my opinion, not so beloved) Noah Webster. One example is a four-page folio announcement, which was folded and mailed to a publisher in January 1830, entitled Series of books for systematic instruction in the English language. By Noah Webster. The first page promotes four of Webster's books and bears the printed signatures of supporting dignitaries. The second page is wholly blank, and the third has a full-page manuscript letter by Webster asking the publisher to return the sheet with approbations to be written on the blank sheet. The fourth page bears the franking marks. This ephemeral piece shows Noah Webster to be the famously aggressive self-promoter he was all along.
Another piece, a pamphlet published in Albany in 1851 (a few years after Webster's death) shows still more of Websterian gumption. This New York State government document, by James W. Beekman, titled Report of minority of committee on literature in reference to the purchase of school districts of Webster's Dictionary, contains a letter by Washington Irving. In the letter Irving expresses his anger after tactfully giving a negative reply to a solicitation from Webster, only to find his few positive phrases (leaving out his refusal to endorse the work) appear in the promotional literature for Webster's Quarto Dictionary.
The quarto February 1928 issue (Vol. XIII, No. 143) of The Periodical, published both at Oxford and at New York (the American edition), celebrates the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary, 1884-1928. The issue contains photographic portraits of the editors and those who were involved in the dictionary's publication and provides a historical overview, in some detail, of how the work was compiled. A small brochure, a 16mo., also published in 1928, gives the text of the speech by Stanley Baldwin at the dinner celebrating the completion of the dictionary.
In the field of Americana, there is the series of papers, initially appearing under the pseudonymous byline "The Druid," in the Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser, Philadelphia 1781. (Alas, this issue is not in my library!) The series was republished in the Philadelphia 1801 collected works of Jonathan Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration of Independence and president of Princeton University. In "The Druid" No. V, Witherspoon coins a new term, "Americanisms," and proposes several criteria for inclusion in this class of words.
Later, in 1815, John Pickering's A Vocabulary or Collection of Words and Phrases Which are Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States of America first appeared in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. III. This essay in dictionary form was republished a year later in 1816 as an expanded book of the same title. Pickering leaned toward seeing American English as somewhat barbaric and inferior to the language spoken and written in England. One of my copies of his book bears a presentation by Lewis Tappan, a noted merchant and abolitionist of Northampton, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York, to his brother Benjamin, a Steubenville, Ohio, legislator, jurist, and anti-slavery leader. The rear pastedown contains a list in ink headed "my contribs" with corresponding page numbers. On each of the listed pages there is an inked check mark and a vertical marginal line noting a passage that cites "a correspondent" or "an obliging correspondent." This copy, thus, identifies one of Pickering's formerly unknown sources.
Rounding off this category, there is the first systematic bibliography of American English, published in Albany in 1883 in The Transactions of the Albany Institute, Vol. X. The author, Gilbert M. Tucker, concludes his essay entitled "American English" with a useful though brief (three pages only) discriminated list of relevant publications.
Leland Little, May 21: Signed Artist Proof of the Monumental G.O.A.T.: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali.
Leland Little, May 21: Assorted Rare Publications Related to H.P. Lovecraft, Including The Recluse Signed by Vincent Starrett.
Leland Little, May 21: Two Issues of The Vagrant, Including the First Appearance of H.P. Lovecraft's "Dagon" in Number Eleven.
Leland Little, May 21: Rare First Printing of Anne of Green Gables, With ALS from the Author.
Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, In First Issue Jacket.
Leland Little, May 21: The Limited Paumanok Edition of The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman.
Leland Little, May 21: Beautifully Bound Limited Flaubert Edition of The Works of Guy de Maupassant.
Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Bonaparte's Celebrated American Ornithology, With Spectacular Hand-Colored Plates.
Leland Little, May 21: A Rare Complete Set of Jardine's The Naturalist's Library, With Hand-Colored Plates.
Leland Little, May 21: Invitation to the Lincoln-Johnson National Inaugural Ball, March 4th, 1865.
Leland Little, May 21: A Scarce Inscribed First Edition of James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name.
Leland Little, May 21: Picasso's Le Goût du Bonheur, Limited Edition.
Sotheby's Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
Sotheby's Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
Sotheby's Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli: Pietro Aquila, Psyche and Proserpina,1690. Starting price 140€
Gonnelli: Jacques Gamelin, Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris, 1779. Starting price 300€
Gonnelli: Giorgio Ghisi, The final Judgement, 1680. Starting price 480€
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli Goya y Lucientes Francisco, Los Proverbios.1877. Starting price 1000 €
Gonnelli: Domenico Peruzzini, Long bearded old man, 1660. Starting price 2200€
Gonnelli: Enea Vico, Leda and the Swan,1542. Starting price 140€
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli: Andrea Del Sarto [school of], San Giovanni Battista, 1570. Starting price 25000€
Gonnelli: Carlo Maratta, Virgin Mary and Jesus, 1660. Starting Price 1200€
Gonnelli: Louis Brion de La Tour, Sphére de Copernic Sphere de Ptolemée / Le Systême de Ptolemée. Le Systême de Ticho-Brahe…, 1766. Starting price 180€
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli: Marc’Antonio Dal Re, Ville di Delizia o Siano Palaggi Camparecci nello Stato di Milano Divise in Sei Tomi Con espressevi le Piante…, Tomo Primo, 1726. Starting price 7000€
Gonnelli: Katsushika Hokusai, Bird on a branch, 1843. Starting price 100€
Ketterer Rare Books Auction May 26th
Ketterer Rare Books Auction May 26th
Ketterer, May 26: Th. McKenney & J. Hall, History of the Indian tribes of North America, 1836-1844. Est: €50,000
Ketterer, May 26:Biblia latina vulgata, manuscript on thin parchment, around 1250. Est: €70,000
Ketterer, May 26: M. Beckmann, Fanferlieschen Schönefüßchen, 1924. Est: €10,000
Ketterer Rare Books Auction May 26th
Ketterer, May 26: A. Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1574. Est: €50,000
Ketterer, May 26: M. S. Merian, Eurcarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis, 1717-18. Est: €6,000
Ketterer, May 26:PAN, 9 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: €12,000
Ketterer Rare Books Auction May 26th
Ketterer, May 26: Breviarium Romanum, Latin manuscript, 1474. Est: €15,000
Ketterer, May 26: Quran manuscript from the Saadian period, Maghreb, 16th century. Est: €10,000
Ketterer, May 26: E. Hemingway, The old man and the sea, 1952. First edition in first issue jacket. Presentation copy. Est: €3,000
Ketterer Rare Books Auction May 26th
Ketterer, May 26: Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De re militari libri quatuor, 1553. Est: €3,000
Ketterer, May 26: K. Marx, Das Kapital, 1867. Est: €30,000
Ketterer, May 26: Brassaï, Transmutations, 1967. Est: €6,000
![Gonnelli: Andrea Del Sarto [school of], San Giovanni Battista, 1570. Starting price 25000€](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/dc0b1dc0-f7c8-40b6-a5a6-870689484c07.jpg "<b>Gonnelli:</b> Andrea Del Sarto [school of], San Giovanni Battista, 1570. Starting price 25000€")
