Search

A tiny but irresistible devotional papercut, with a bouquet including a daffodil, tulip and rose, an image of the infant Christ (holding cross and nails) and with a text in French: ‘This little bouquet would be poor indeed if Jesus were not at its centre.’ A variation on the traditional French canivet, this type of diminutive papercut was probably destined for tucking into a prayerbook.

First edition. A rare local Somerset flora which exemplifies the essential botanical recording work done by women of the period, who, like Mrs Lainson, preferred to remain largely anonymous. Though wide-ranging, descriptive and precise, especially regarding habitat, she wrote in her preface: ‘It makes no pretension to be scientific; nor is it framed after any formal rule:—the idea has been to provide a little manual of what may be observed during a walk of not exceeding two or three hours. The compiler does not presume to call herself a Botanist...’ The common names of the plants, shrubs, trees and sedges given in the text are supplemented by a Latin glossary at the end. Cleveden is a seaside parish on the Severn Estuary, and the plants recorded include some interesting marsh and coastal species. Among rarer flowers is found the orchid known as Ladies Tresses (Spiranthes spiralis), referred to by Mrs Lainson as ‘Common Ladies Tresses’ but now scarce.
Mrs Lainson previously published some local plant lists in the Clevedon Mercury (April 29 and Dec. 21, 1876) under the pseudonym of ‘Lily Grey’ and her botanical collections were given to the University of Bristol and her mosses are in the museum at Weston-super-Mare. Green, Bibliotheca Somersetiensis, vol. 3, p. 1.

An exercise or model book for dentelle au crochet (crocheted lace) including numerous decorative borders, various roundels and a number of tubular designs for use as cuffs or sleeves. The patterns imitate those of cushion lace, but were created with coarser threads and with a crochet hook rather than bobbins. The patterns and execution are impressive, even if crocheted lace was considered less refined than ‘true’ lace. This album, with very few clues to its maker or provenance and on paper of the coarsest grade, appears as a rather remarkable survival of the craft in its most vernacular setting.

A dramatic lifetime portrait of Charles Simeon, figurehead of the Evangelical movement in the Church of England, preaching on 1 Corinthians 10:15, ‘I speak as to wise men; judge ye [what I say]’. Simeon had written extensive homiletical commentaries on 1 and 2 Corinthians as part of his massive 21-volume work, Horae Homileticae. He was born in 1759 in Reading and was educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. Shortly after he was ordained deacon in 1782, he was assigned as the perpetual curate to the Church of the Holy Trinity in Cambridge. He remained the pastor of this parish for 54 years until his death at age 77 in 1836. Initially controversial, with many at the university opposing his evangelical style and convictions, he became one of the most celebrated preachers of his age, and his influence stretched far beyond Cambridge. He was among the founders of the Church Missionary Society in 1797 and actively supported the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Religious Tract Society, the Colonial and Continental Church Society, and the Church Mission to the Jews. His sermons and weekly discussion groups were eagerly attended, so that he was often obliged to charge admission, as witnessed by the two manuscript admission tickets pasted to the back of the original frame of this watercolour.

A ladder-shaped folding toy — a rare graphic satire on the separation of George IV and Queen Caroline published after the opening of the ‘trial’ of Queen Caroline on 17 August 1820. It was printed to be sold with a popular pamphlet of the same name, which ran to numerous editions that year, but the two are rarely found preserved together, and the toy/print is very rare (lacking in most library copies). This copy has never been folded into a ladder and is loose, as sold, in its original plain paper wrapper. The form of the print is based on another contemporary paper toy (The Matrimonial Ladder) on the ups and downs of marriage, which was also being offered by sellers of books, prints and novelties in 1820.
‘George IV’s determination, following his succession to the throne in 1820, to finally obtain a divorce from his estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick, sparked an opposition campaign, both in Parliament and in the country, which threatened the survival of Lord Liverpool’s Tory administration. It also led to extensive proceedings in the House of Lords, which took on the appearance of a state trial. On 5 June 1820 Caroline, who had been living abroad for the past six years, arrived unexpectedly in England to claim her right to be crowned queen. The government, under intense pressure from the king, reluctantly agreed to introduce a bill of pains and penalties into the House of Lords, which would have annulled the royal marriage and deprived Caroline of her title. She thereupon became the unlikely beneficiary of a wave of indignant public sympathy, being perceived as a ‘wronged woman’ who was bravely struggling to uphold her rights against a callous political establishment’ (’The Queen Caroline Affair, 1820’ in The History of Parliament, online). BM Satires 13808

A satirical address to drinkers on on the joys and perils of wine, addressed to ‘The Knights of the Round Table’, or the drinkers assembled at the hôtel Saint Valery. The playful false imprint disguises its origin at the press of Chalopin in Caen. Hélot, La Bibliothèque bleue en Normandie, 7.

A rare (probably otherwise unrecorded) handbill for an artisan cork maker in the rue de la Huchette, Paris. Monsieur Liégard, doing business in Liége, in Spain, Portugal and elsewhere, offers corks of all sorts and all forms of fittings for the outirage or ‘racking’ of wine (transfer technique carried out to eliminate the lees and other particles that have settled at the bottom of a cask). From the oenological collection of Bernard Chwarz, bound in appropriate folding boards of natural cork paper.

First edition in German of Baudelocque’s fundamental textbook of obstetrics Principes sur l’art des accouchemens (1775 and 1787), presentation copy from the translator to a named midwife, given as a prize at the Colmar school for midwives which he established in 1803.
Gabriel Louis François Anaclet Morel was born in Colmar in 1769 and died there in 1842 under the July Monarchy. He was mayor of Colmar from 1813 to 1814 and from 1830 to 1841. A doctor and surgeon, in 1803,he founded the first school of midwives in Colmar Worldcat: no copy outside France/Switzerland/Germany.

First edition in French of La città del sole, the seventeenth-century utopian work in which Campanella described a just society where goods, women and children are held in common and work is evenly distributed. It was understandably of great interest to early socialist and communist thinkers, though did not appear in French until this translation by the French Fourierist, François Villegardelle, who also translated More’s Utopia. Despite its influence on emergent French socialism, this is now a rare book. WorldCat locates copies at: International Labour Office (DC), MacMaster and Stanford only outside continental Europe. LibraryHub locates copies at BL and London Library.

First edition, one of 204 copies, numbered and initialled by the publisher. The classic meditation on book collecting and the relationship between the collector and their library. L’Amour des Livres rapidly acquired an almost legendary status amongst French collectors. Janin himself described the volume as the work of ‘a bibliomaniac, for the use of a few madmen of his own species,’ a characterisation that perfectly captures the mixture of humour, erudition, self-awareness, and devotion that runs throughout the text. The book occupies an important position in the literature of bibliophily, appearing during the great age of French book collecting and at a moment when the cult of the rare book was becoming inseparable from the formation of major private libraries. Its influence extended well beyond its modest size, helping to shape the romantic image of the collector that continued to dominate bibliophilic culture into the twentieth century. Carteret called it ‘La Bible du bibliophile.’

A striking spickelbild print, in which gold foil and orange block-printed scraps are laid into windows cut into the paper to give shimmering and eye-catching details to this image of Christ’s passion. The woodcut image is itself dense in iconography. The central cross is flanked by the Virgin and John the Baptist, around which are ranged instruments and episodes of the crucifixion story: including the crowing cock, a lantern, a bag of coins, the ladder, instruments of scourging, the holy sponge on a reed, the spear of Longinus, a lantern, a hammer, pliers, dice used by the Roman soldiers, and the spitting face of a tormentor.
The German and French prayer beneath the woodcut translates as follows: ‘O divine Savior, who, naked, drenched with gall and vinegar, stretched upon the wood of the cross, nailed hand and foot, suffered and overcame death amidst the mockery of the Jews! Penetrate my limbs, my senses, and my soul with your fear, and bind me firmly to you, so that I may work for you alone, think of you alone, and love you alone; and do not allow the infinite worth of your precious blood to be lost upon me, a sinner’.
Johann Michael Aloys Blunschi (1758-1832) was a prolific Catholic printer in the Swiss canton town of Zug. He was the son of Johann Michael Blunschi (1728–1781) the master printer who established the family business in Zug's Hintergasse (now Zeughausgasse)

An attractive and representative taufbrief or baptismal certificate traditionally given by godparents to a child at baptism, This example is for one Johanne Christiane Henriette Wahrbinder, baptised in 1828. The folding exterior has four evangelists, each both seated and standing, together with a larger baptismal scene showing mother, father and child at the font with a priest an (in this case) a godmother. Other examples by this printer have variations (presumably according to the intended recipient). The interior bears a variant of a traditional baptismal prayer beginning:
‘Du bist, mein Pathchen, nun geweiht,
Dich künftig Christ zu nennen...’
With eight folds making the sheet into a small square package, taufbrief were sometime given with coins or religious objects enclosed, sealed in with wax. This example has no trace of wax sealing.

The three dressed painting comprise:
‘S. APPOLONIA’ [sic]. [Saint Appolonia] show with palm and pincers. Third-century Christian virgin and deaconess martyred in Alexandria around 249 AD during an anti-Christian uprising. According to St. Dionysius of Alexandria, her teeth were violently broken, and she was threatened with burning unless she renounced Christ. Instead, she leapt into the flames, choosing death over apostasy. Venerated in Catholic, Orthodox, and Coptic traditions, she is patron saint of dentists and those with toothache, and is depicted with pincers holding a tooth.
‘S. CAECILLA’. [Saint Cecilia] shown with her harp. Cecilia of Rome was a Christian virgin martyr, d. 230 AD, and is patron saint of music and musicians.
‘S. CORNELIA’. Shown holding a cross. St. Cornelia was an early Christian martyr who was executed in North Africa during the persecutions of Christians.
Each is an accomplished though highly stylised image with the central figure mainly applied in painted collage, their robes made up from tiny fabric scraps, often of high quality with gold and silver threads. In each case the figure is set in a background comprising architectual features. The first two include varieties of enclosed gardens with fountains, while all three include large vases of flowers and the image of the holy spirit descending as a dove from the clouds above.

Five drawings from the early stages of the Second World War, presumably for commercial publication in France, of which four are on the theme of the song ‘We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’ by Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy, written whilst he was a Captain in the British Expeditionary Force during the early stages of the Second World War. The defensive Siegfried Line was constructed by Germany in the 1930s, opposite the French Maginot Line but was widely ridiculed by the Allies in the opening year of the war who threatened to treat the defence as no more than a clothes line. The popular sentiment expressed in the song is extended in these French cartoon drawings in which the Amercian, British Union Jack and French Tricolor are pegged out on the line. One of the sketches shows a young soldier in uniform hugged by his wife and children in a typical enlistment scene.

A very rare chapbook collection of letter-writing models, marketed to women readers (and writers) but actually including romantic sample letters for male writers. It’s an interesting piece of opportunistic publishing, which comprises reissued sheets of a much earlier, similarly-titled letter collection, Le Secrétaire des Dames (first issued by Garnier at Troyes with a privilege dated 1759). Baudot’s Troyes publication included the whole of that earlier work (24 pages, including original title), but adding his own 8 pages of additional letters (all romantic letters) at the beginning and his wrapper with a new, variant title and his adverts.
Speculative and undeclared re-issues were quite typical of the unregulated productions (’Bibliothèque bleu’) of popular provincial printers in France, but it’s unusual to find the grafting of one book to another in this way. Though the title-page of earlier Le Secrétaire des Dames is undated, the privilege is dated 1759, and the typography feels to be of the eighteenth rather than nineteenth century. The wrapper and additional eight pages of Le Petit Secrétaire des Dames, also undated are clearly of the first half of the nineteenth century. The rear cover advertises no less than seventy-eight titles offered by Baudot, including saints’ lives, chivalric romances, popular religious manuals and fairy tales. Charles-Louis Baudot (1795-1849) had been apprenticed to the Parisian printing house Firmin-Didot for seven years before settling in Troyes, he purchased the business and stock of Garnier of Troyes in 31 May 1830 and was licensed as a printer and bookseller on 1 Dec. 1830.
Le Secrétaire des Dames is noted by Roger Chartier in his essay on the culture of writing manuals of this genre (’Secrétaires for the People?’) in which he comments: ‘The book’s title was remarkably ill-chosen, given that none of the letters had been penned by a woman and only two were addressed to one’. cf. Morin, 1030. Roger Chartier, ’Secrétaires for the People?’ in Correspondence: Models of Letter-writing from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth Century (1997). p. 84.

First editions of two influential early Hebrew grammars. William Robertson was one of the earliest writers to attempt to teach Hebrew through English to a broad readership, the title, remarkably for the period, stressing that Hebrew can be learned by ‘any ordinary capacity of either sexe’ or ‘any knowing Christian, Man or Woman. The first part, The First Gate, or the Outward Door to the Holy Tongue, Opened in English is a reissue with cancel title of A Gate or Door to the Holy Tongue (1653) intended as the first part of a projected course of Hebrew instruction and was issued here with its continuation, the first edition of The Second Gate, or the Inner Door to the Holy Tongue (1655). The first part combines a Hebrew grammar with explanations of the Hebrew text of Obadiah and of the the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments), while the much larger second part consists of a Hebrew lexicon or dictionary.
The book was published during the English Commonwealth, when interest in Hebrew studies was unusually intense among Protestant intellectuals. Many believed that recovering the original languages of Scripture was essential to religious reform, allowing ordinary people direct access to Hebrew scripture without clerical interpretation Some circles also connected Hebrew studies with hopes for the conversion of the Jews and millenarian expectations.
Robertson was born in Edinburgh and graduated MA there by 1651 before moving to London and establishing himself as a teacher of Hebrew. ‘Robertson found patrons in the puritan establishment: the member of parliament John Sadler... the lord chief baron of the exchequer, William Steele... and, most notably, his distinguished pupil and benefactor Lady Ranelagh, née Katharine Boyle, the beloved elder sister of Robert Boyle (Oxford DNB).
The first Gate has the original title page of the 1653 edition cancelled by a bifolium, as called for, with the second leaf of the bifolium bearing an endorsement of the work signed on verso by James Cranford and 21 others (all London pastors) together with the called-for additional bifolium (here bound before A2) bearing a dedication to the author's ‘respected friend’ (another reissue, Wing R1611, lacks this bifolium). cf. Wing R 1611 (alternative issue without additional bifolium) and R 1618.

Abridged from Bryan Edwards’s work of the same title (1793) and his Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St Domingo (1797). Together, these works became the standard British histories of the region, with valuable accounts of the operation of the slave trade. In 1791, Edwards had been part of the British relief expedition to the French colony of Saint Domingue. Son of a Jamaica slave-owner, Edwards had been leading member of the colonial assembly of Jamaica, but in a few years returned to England trading as a West India merchant. He supported the Atlantic slave trade, but was open to the improvement of the conditions for enslaved people in the region. He was described by abolitionist William Wilberforce as a powerful opponent.

First edition in French of this popular collection of astronomical problems and recreations, 102 problems translated from the last part of Keith’s bestselling A New Treatise on the Use of the Globes (1805) which had run to at least seven editions by the time of this collection. The volvelle giving world time zones is an innovation for this edition, not present in the preceding English work. The verso of the half-title contains the the following ‘Observation’: ‘L’ouvrage anglais dont nous publions la traduction est populaire en Amérique comme dans la Grande-Bretagne. l’auteur est le savant M. Keith. Sept éditions ont été épuisées en Angleterre dans l’espace de quelques années. The Bibliothèque nationale catalogue attributes the translation to Philippe-Jacques Coulier, an autodidact from a marine background who nonetheless became a member of the French Société de Géographie in 1830. Worldcat: Fordham and Boston Public Library only outside continental Europe; no UK copies located in Libraryhub.

Apparently otherwise unrecorded, a souvenir print of the first parachute descent in England, made by the French aeronaut André-Jacques Garnerin, jumping from a hydrogen balloon. The ascent and descent attracted huge crowds, and was recorded in numerous contemporary prints, some satirical, some informational.
Garnerin had already gained global fame for executing the world’s first successful parachute descent in Paris in 1797. During the Peace of Amiens in 1802, he traveled to London with his wife, Jeanne-Geneviève (herself a pioneering female parachutist), to tour his aerial exhibitions. His first jump was over London, as recorded here, followed by others, including one at Sydney Gardens in Bath, an event probably witnessed by Jane Austen, then living at number 4 Sydney Place.
The full caption reads: ‘The Balloon & Parachute with which Monsr. Garnerin ascended from St, Georges Parade on Sept. 21st 1802. He descended by the latter in safety near St. Pancras Middx. The first experiment of this kind ever performed in England’.

A scarce regency juvenile title, aimed at young girls, with early female ownership inscriptions. The tale contrasts two distinct moral paths. Mary is clever but vain, whereas Sophia is diligent and kind. Following their father's death, Sophia's virtue is ultimately rewarded with a substantial inheritance. Opie A 1108. Worldcat: UCLA, Indiana and Toronto. Another issue of the same year gives and additional Sidmouth bookseller in the imprint.