New York: Wittemann Brothers, 1882. Hardcover. Near fine. 3.25" x 5", oblong, embossed red boards stamped in gilt. Accordion-folded view book, with 20 photo-lithographic views on 20 panels, as well as a separate five-panel insert at the rear advertising more than 100 souvenir albums sold by Wittemann Brothers that were made using Louis Glaser's process. Glaser used multiple stones to achieve "a varnished look that creates greater illusion of depth than a simple lithograph or toned lithograph" (Ron Tyler, unpublished work on 19th century lithographs). A price is given for each book, and a final page offers favorable reviews. The Boston Herald proclaims one book "a perfect marvel for the fidelity with which the artist has copied the city and its surroundings as they are, and may be regarded as the greatest triumph of the photographic art that has ever been achieved." Scenes include a four-panel panorama of the city, Canal Street, the Levee, New Cotton Exchange, Custom House, Charity Hospital, Jackson Square, St. Charles Hotel, Old French Market, Spanish Fort, etc. (Item #14137)

Black cloth album, 7" x 10", oblong, with 95 photographs tipped in. Image size ranges from 3.25" x 4.25" to 4.25" x 6.25". A few pages with photographs missing, otherwise very good. Frank Ferguson Bluff was a skilled amateur photographer, having worked for seven years in the finishing department of a photographic studio as a young man. He made his living as head of the Toledo Artificial Limb Company, but clearly had an ongoing interest in photography, and a number of the images are quite striking. Each image is captioned by hand, and an additional manuscript list of the subjects is laid in. Subject matter includes outdoor scenes around Toledo (Museum of Art, Ottawa Park, Toledo State Hospital Grounds, Central Grove Park, Walbridge Park, Toledo Beach); a few family portraits, scenes from Belle Isle (Casino Building, Floral Flag, Conservatory); and many close-up images of flowers and plants (some taken in a studio), apparently a favorite subject. Of particular interest are a series of eight photos capturing preparations for the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus and a series of seven showing floats and participants in the Agricultural and Industrial Parade at Adrian, Michigan. (Item #14136)

Boston and New York: Lee and Shepard and Charles T. Dillingham, 1884. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. pp. ix, 258 + ads. 5" x 7". Brown pictorial cloth. Corners bumped, hinges starting, otherwise sound and clean. Leighton had lived on the Pacific coast for sixteen years before writing this book, which aims to "indicate something of its characteristic features and attractions, more especially those of the Puget Sound region," which is "unmarred as yet by any human interference...[and] presents an endless field for observation and enjoyment," and potential for "vigorous growth and development and a brilliant and substantial future." Tweney #43; Smith 5817. (Item #14010)

Chicago: R.B. Mitchell, 1883. Softcover. Good. 6 x 9 in, 84 pp, in original sewn wrappers. Front cover illustrated in color with image of the yard-owner's residence; text illustrated with 28 woodcuts of different breeds of chickens, as well as ads for poultry-related publications and products. Some soiling, spine partially perished, back cover detached but present, internally a few stray pencil marks, otherwise quite clean. Detailed text describes the property and the design of the poultry houses, methods of feeding, disease management, financial benefits of raising fowl, price list, shipping details, and testimonials ("I think that your location is elegant and particularly adapted to poultry raising. I think your poultry houses are the neatest, cheapest, and by far the most convenient I ever saw. Your flock contains many beauties of high excellence."). Back cover illustrated with a caricature of an African-American boy captioned "Injured Innocence," and underneath: "I hain't seen nuffin of yer chickens: Do you took me for a thief? Do you see any chickens 'bout me? Go 'way dar, white man. Treat a boy 'spectable if he am brack!" (Item #14074)

New York and London: R. H. Russell and Lawrence & Bullen, 1897. First Trade Edition. Hardcover. Very good. Oblong folio, 2 pp text and 61 plates. Cloth-backed pictorial boards, top edge gilt. Mild abrasion to cloth, light soiling to boards (less than usually found), marginal foxing to a few plates. Wister writes in the preface "I have stood before many paintings of the West. Paintings of mountains, paintings of buffalo, paintings of Indians--the whole mystic and heroic pageant of our American soil....Long before my eyes looked upon its beautiful domain, I studied the paintings; but when Remington came with only a pencil, I forgot the rest!" Howes R-205, Graff 3457. (Item #14071)

Troy, NY: A.W. Scribner & Co., 1854. First Edition. Softcover. Very good. 28 pp, in original sewn wrappers. 5.5" x 9". Signature on front cover, old folding crease. The Arctic, a 2850-ton transatlantic liner of the Collins Line (New York & Liverpool United States' Mail Steamship Company), sank off Cape Race, Newfoundland on September 27, 1854, after a collision with a French ship in the fog. Nearly 400 people died, including all women and children on board. The news hit the American public especially hard because the Arctic was known for its luxury and speed and regarded as a symbol of national glory. As with most sudden disasters of the era, the shipwreck offered an occasion for preachers to remind their flocks of the fleeting nature of life and urge them to prepare themselves, in the words of Rev. Smalley, "to have their ties to this world broken forever." He describes the fine qualities of the ship: "timbered so thickly as to appear as one solid mass of oak; ribbed and stayed with iron and copper, every resources exhausted to secure strength" as well as her brave and accomplished passengers (among them noted British archaeologist Frederick Catherwood), "happy voyagers" who little suspected "the peril just under the bow." After recounting the wreck in dramatic detail ("the waters leap in through the ravaged orifice, as though the ocean were hungry for his prey"), he asks "shall not the lessons taught us with such an unspeakable sorrow, moderate the passion for haste, and multiply the means of safety? What but the madness of making haste to be rich leads to such wholesale destruction of human life as this? Will not our whole community pause for a season, and reflect?" (Item #14053)

Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1856. First Edition. Hardcover. Good+. xiv, 15-295 pp, with frontis illustration of "Marshal's posse with Burns moving down State Street." Original blind-stamped cloth boards. Bumped at corners, spine faded but legible, frayed at head and foot. Front free endpaper neatly removed, otherwise internally very good, with sound binding and no markings. Burns, a notorious fugitive slave, sold his story to Stevens to finance his education. "The Burns affair was the most important and publicized fugitive slave case in the history of American slavery because of its unique set of circumstances. It coincided with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and with the Sherman M. Booth fugitive slave rescue case earlier that year, all of which contributed to national political realignment over the slavery issue... Eight states now enacted new personal liberty laws to counter the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. An 1855 Massachusetts statute protected alleged fugitives with due process of law while punishing state officials and militiamen involved in recaption...Throughout his ordeal Anthony Burns demonstrated his intelligence and resourcefulness, courage and humor, honesty and integrity" (ANB). Blockson 2208; Sabin 91490. (Item #13388)

Charleston, S.C. Frank A. Norwell, 1883. First Edition. Softcover. Very good. 6" x 9.5", oblong, pictorial wrappers. 12 heliotype views (image size 4" x 6.5") of the grounds of Magnolia plantation (then the residence of Rev. J.G. Drayton), with one page of descriptive text taken from Harper's Magazine. Some marginal soiling, large chip missing from back cover, otherwise very good. The photographer, Frank Nowell (not Norwell, as printed on the cover), was a successful commercial photographer who maintained a studio in Charleston from about 1870-1890. He specialized in portraits, but also produced views of local scenery. A visitor to his studio in 1883, writing for Photographic Times and American Photographer, was particularly taken with his views of Magnolia: "Wandering about from scene to scene among the ground, lakes, lawns, avenues of oaks and forests of camellias and azaleas blooming beneath huge magnolias and live oaks with a camera and a supply of dry plates, almost bewildered among such an embarrassment of pictorial richness, who is there that does not envy Mr. Norwell such chances? It is only fitting that we should say that in this artist the scenery has had an able exponent, one who knows not only how to make selection of a scene, but also possesses ability to photograph it." Norwell's work is quite scarce today, as is this book, which is unrecorded in OCLC. (Item #14121)

New York: Wittemann Brothers. Hardcover. Near fine. Undated, 1880s. 3.25" x 5", oblong, embossed brown boards stamped in gilt. Accordion-folded view book, with 14 lithographed views on 18 panels, made using a special process developed by Louis Glaser that used multiple stones to achieve "a varnished look that creates greater illusion of depth than a simple lithograph or toned lithograph" (Ron Tyler, unpublished work on 19th century lithographs). Includes two panoramas (boats on the Mississippi; view west from the courthouses), street scenes, views of important buildings (courthouse, new post office, custom house, Four Courts, Union Depot, Lindell Hotel), Shaw's Garden, Tower Grove Park, Lafayette Park. Together they offer an engaging glimpse into St. Louis at a time when it was the nation's fourth largest city. (Item #14128)

Austin, TX: Von Boeckmann-Jones Company, 1936-1942. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. First five volumes (of 7) of "the best history of the three centuries of Spanish and Mexican Texas [with] the first detailed account of literally dozens of expeditions and settlements in Texas" (Jenkins, Basic Texas Books). 8vo, original embossed blue cloth; c. 2200 pp in total; index in each volume, many plates and folding maps. Some wear to extremities, a few previous owner's names, old insect damage to the final few pages of all but one volume (no loss of text). Otherwise quite clean and sound. Jenkins writes that this work opens up a world of entirely new history for the Big Bend Region and for South Texas and provides by far the most complete account of the missions in the San Antonio-Goliad region and in East Texas," and Tate (Indians of Texas) says it is an "invaluable source of information on all phases of Catholic influence in Texas. Detailed information on Indian tribes from the coastal and eastern sections of the state is extremely valuable, especially in the first four volumes. No researcher can afford to overlook this seminal work." (Item #14145)

London: J. Mawman, 1825. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine. 4to, pp. vii, 326; recent quarter-leather and marbled boards. New endpapers, recent bookplate on front pastedown. Frontispiece foxed, all else very clean and sound. Hill (1833): "Waterton was an enterprising traveler and a zealous naturalist. He was an unrivaled expert in taxidermy, and the frontispiece to this volume shows his celebrated 'Nondescript man," made up from various odds and ends. His country neighbors in Yorkshire believed he had a real stuffed human being on his premises, which almost caused a local riot....His narrative is full of descriptions of birds, animals, and Indians, and it is an outstanding work on the natural history of Columbia and Venezuela." Borba de Moraes (p. 372) notes that this was the first work to describe the plants and animals of the tropics--previously known mainly as museum specimens--from personal observation. The part dealing with the United States recounts a journey inspired by Alexander Wilson's "animated description" of American birds. After sailing to New York, Waterton traveled up the Hudson to Albany and then on to Buffalo, Quebec, and back to Saratoga via Lakes Champlain and George. Fairly soon into this journey he realized that "I had come into the wrong country to look for bugs, bears, brutes, and buffaloes," but he found his travels pleasurable none the less and writes favorably of the landscape and the people: "There is nothing haughty or forbidding in the Americans; and wherever you meet them, they appear to be quite at home....The immense number of highly polished females who go in the stages to visit the different places of amusement, and see the stupendous natural curiosities of this extensive county, incontestably proves that safety and convenience are assured to them, and that the most distant attempt at rudeness would, by common consent, be immediately put down." Sabin 102094; Howes W-158. (Item #14134)

Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1870. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. pp. viii, 232 with 5 plates and a folding map (16" x 42", partially colored) in a rear pocket, 11 pages of ads at rear, several for railroads. Publisher's rust cloth stamped in gilt. Chipping to spine ends, corners rubbed, contemporary owner's inscription in pencil on front free endpaper, map with small tears at the folds. Coffin (who generally went by "Carleton") was a well-known Civil War correspondent. This account of "the physical features of the vast reach of country lying between the Lakes and the Pacific, not only in the United States, but in British America as well" was based on his own travels as well as "the most trustworthy accounts of persons who have lived there" and the work of survey engineers. The map, he says, is "the most complete map ever published of the country between the 36th and 55th parallel...showing not only the entire railway system of the Eastern and Middle States, but also the Union Pacific Railroad and the Northern Pacific, now under construction." Includes discussion of northern Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Red River Valley, Dakota Territory, Oregon, and the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Smith 1859, Graff 793. (Item #14054)

Chicago and New York: Rand McNally & Company, 1889. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine. Title continues: "With Special Chapters on Hunting the Grizzly Bear, the Buffalo, Elk, Antelope, Rocky Mountain Goat, and Deer; Also on Trouting in the Rocky Mountains; on A Montana Round-Up; Life Among the Cowboys, etc." 339 pp, illustrations, 12 pages of ads for books, photographic supplies, cigarettes, guns, taxidermy supplies, sporting attire, railroad excursions. Original rust cloth decorated in gilt, with image of an elk stamped on the front board. Shields (1846-1925) wrote extensively on sporting topics under the pen-name Coquina before establishing Recreation: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Everything the Name Implies in 1894. Between 1897 and 1902, he was head of the Campfire Club of America. Much of this volume recounts his travels through the Puget Sound and Cascades regions and an excursion into British Columbia. Other chapters deal with hunting or fishing trips in Montana, Texas, and northern Wisconsin. Smith 9422, Herd 2060. (Item #14067)