Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - January - 2007 Issue
Rare Americana from Michael Brown Rare Books
Zadok Cramer's exceedingly rare Child's Library.
Carter would be collared by a powerful former New York senator, close to President McKinley, who demanded he support the Nicaragua route. The senator had a financial interest in the Maritime Canal Company of Nicaragua. Carter refused. Meanwhile, back in Savannah, his jealous successor as chief engineer sought to destroy his reputation. Carter had lived quite a luxurious lifestyle for an army engineer, so his successor claimed corruption. Carter had lived well because of funds provided by his father-in-law, a wealthy associate of the Vanderbilts. However, the court refused to consider the father-in-law's letter at the time of Carter's trial. Political exigencies apparently led the court to seize on the opportunity to disgrace Carter. Carter wrote his side of the story, generating a lengthy typescript in 1932, and a revised version in 1940. It was never published, but those typescripts are herein offered as item 41. $6,500. Carter's story is retold on the West Point "Associates of Graduates" website at http://www.aogusma.org/Pubs/assembly/980910/canal.htm. It was also described in the October 21, 1935 issue of Time Magazine, at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,755175-1,00.htm.
Item 100 is another extreme rarity. The book is a Child's Library of Useful Knowledge...from the Pittsburgh press of bookseller Zadok Cramer (also Zadock Cramer) in 1806. Brown describes this as, "The only copy known of the only known edition of this unrecorded American children's anthology..." He also notes that this may be the earliest extant children's book printed west of the Alleghenies. The only earlier such book identified is one known only through a newspaper advertisement. It may also be the first illustrated book published west of the Alleghenies. The book is labeled volume one, and Cramer promises more if he is so encouraged, but there is no evidence of further volumes. Cramer was a legendary Pittsburgh printer, who published guidebooks for those traveling down the Ohio River and into the West. He published the first first-hand report of the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1807, Patrick Gass' "Journal of Travels and Voyages," seven years before the official report was released. Brown was not able to find this book listed in any bibliographies or collections. The only reference we could find was in a listing of books for sale in Cramer's 1810 Pittsburgh almanac. Perhaps that is when this copy sold, as it has an inscription dated 1810. The book contains over 70 selections of prose and poetry, including an Indian song and a story about sugar-making along the Mississippi with anti-slavery overtones. $7,500.
Michael Brown Rare Books may be found online at www.mbamericana.com, telephone 215-387-2290.
