New York: Printed and sold by John and Andrew M'Lean, 1788.. Two volumes bound in one. vi,227; vi,384pp. 12mo. Contemporary sheep, spine with plain... More

New York: Printed and sold by John and Andrew M'Lean, 1788.. Two volumes bound in one. vi,227; vi,384pp. 12mo. Contemporary sheep, spine with plain gilt rules. Expertly rebacked, with original spine laid down, boards somewhat rubbed. Light foxing and toning. Pencil notes on free endpapers. Small tear in pp.49/50 with no loss. Overall very good, with the bookplate of F. Olcott. In a half morocco and cloth clamshell box with chemise. The rare first edition of the most important work of American political thought ever written and, according to Thomas Jefferson, "the best commentary on the principles of government." The first edition of THE FEDERALIST comprises the first collected printing of the eighty-five seminal essays written in defense of the newly-drafted Constitution. The essays were first issued individually by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in New York newspapers under the pseudonym Publius to garner support for the ratification of the Constitution. The first thirty-six numbers of THE FEDERALIST were here published in book form in March 1788, with the remaining forty- nine, together with the text of the Constitution, in May of that year. Upon its publication, George Washington noted to Alexander Hamilton that the work "will merit the Notice of Posterity; because in it are candidly and ably discussed the principles of freedom and the topics of government, which will always be interesting to mankind" (George Washington, letter to Hamilton, August 28, 1788). The genesis of this "classic exposition of the principles of republican government" (Bernstein) is to be found in the "great national discussion" which took place about the ratification of the Constitution, and the necessity of answering the salvos in print from the Anti- Federalists and other opponents of a strong federal government. The original plan was that James Madison and John Jay were to help Hamilton write a series of essays explaining the merits of their system, whilst also rebutting the arguments of its detractors. "Hamilton wrote the first piece in October 1787 on a sloop returning from Albany...He finished many pieces while the printer waited in a hall for the completed copy" - Brookhiser. In the end, well over half of the eighty- five essays were written by Hamilton alone. Despite the intense time pressures under which the series was written "what began as a propaganda tract, aimed only at winning the election for delegates to New York's state ratifying convention, evolved into the classic commentary upon the American Federal system" - McDonald. THE FEDERALIST is without question the most important commentary on the Constitution, the most significant American contribution to political theory and among the most important of all American books. EVANS 21127. GROLIER AMERICAN 100, 19. STREETER SALE 1049. CHURCH 1230. HOWES H114, "c." COHEN 2818. SABIN 23979. FORD 17. PRINTING AND THE MIND OF MAN 234. R.B. Bernstein, ARE WE TO BE A NATION? THE MAKING OF THE CONSTITUTION (1987), p.242. R. Brookhiser, ALEXANDER HAMILTON: AMERICAN (1999), pp.68- 69. F. McDonald, ALEXANDER HAMILTON: A BIOGRAPHY, p.107. Less

Buy from:

On Board the Bonhomme Richard at L'Orient, France. June 14, 1779.. [1]p. manuscript letter on a folded folio sheet. Docketed on the fourth page and... More

On Board the Bonhomme Richard at L'Orient, France. June 14, 1779.. [1]p. manuscript letter on a folded folio sheet. Docketed on the fourth page and addressed in Jones's hand to "Captain M[atthew] Parke of the Marine troops." Sheet strengthened around the edges, closed tear mended in the second sheet. Very good. In a half morocco and cloth folding box, spine gilt. A very interesting manuscript letter, signed by Captain John Paul Jones as commander the American squadron off the coast of Europe, ordering Matthew Parke, a member of the Marine troops, to attend a court martial on board his ship, the Bonhomme Richard. Jones would gain everlasting fame and glory just a few weeks after he signed this letter, when he captured the HMS Serapis in the North Sea. In 1779 John Paul Jones took command of a 900-ton French East Indiaman, armed and renamed Bonhomme Richard as a compliment to his patron, Benjamin Franklin. The outfitting of the ship in the port of L'Orient consumed several months, and it was not ready for sea until June. The ship's crew was originally formed of prisoners taken from English ships by the French. Evidently, a group of these prisoner-sailors conspired to capture the ship, and Jones ordered their court martial to take place on June 15 on board the Bonhomme Richard. The manuscript text, signed by Jones in his own hand at the end, reads: "By the Honble. John P. Jones Captain in the American Navy and Commander in Chief of the American Squadron now in Europe. Sir you are hereby required and directed to attend at a Court Martial to be held on board the Bon homme [sic] Richard tomorrow for the Trial of James Enion, John Atwood, John Lomney, John Balch, John Layton, Andrew Thompson, George Johnston, William Carmichael, Alexander Cooper, William Hanover, Thomas Cole and Nathaniel Bonner - all of whom have been put under confinement by Lieutenant John Brown for mutinous behaviour and for refusing to do their duty on board the American ship of war the Bon homme Richard. You are also to try any other person or persons belonging to the American service who may in the course of the evidence appear to have been principally concerned in that mutiny - for which this shall be your order. Given on board the Bon homme Richard at L'Orient the 14th day of June 1779." Along with the letter, laid into a compartment in the box, is a commemorative medal, 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches, with a portrait on the recto of Jones after the bust by Houdon, and an allegorical scene on the verso entitled "America claims her illustrious dead - Paris Annapolis 1905." The medal was issued to commemorate the exhumation and re- burial of Jones's body from beneath the streets of Paris to its final resting place in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1905. Any substantive, Revolutionary-era John Paul Jones letters or manuscripts are extremely rare in the market. This is an especially interesting and displayable artifact of Jones' tenure as commander of the Bonhomme Richard, with several references to the ship, where he earned his greatest fame during the Revolution. Less

Buy from:

New York & Amsterdam: Printed in Holland for the Johnson Reprint Corporation and Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1971-1972.. Four volumes. Limitation... More

New York & Amsterdam: Printed in Holland for the Johnson Reprint Corporation and Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1971-1972.. Four volumes. Limitation leaf printed recto only in black, 4 general titles, 4 volume titles, 4 printed facsimiles of the original titles. 435 plates, printed in up to eight colors, after John James Audubon. Double elephant folio. Original brown half calf over green cloth-covered boards, upper covers with inset brown in calf panel lettered in gilt with author and title, the flat spines lettered in gilt with author, title and volume number. Leather somewhat scuffed, internally fine. The "Amsterdam Audubon" was limited to only 250 copies. A viable alternative to the original Havell edition, and one of only two full-size facsimile editions of the complete work ever published. In October 1971, employing the most faithful printing method available, the best materials and the ablest craftsmen of their age, the Amsterdam firm of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd., in conjunction with the Johnson Reprint Corporation of New York, set out to produce the finest possible limited edition facsimile of the greatest bird book ever printed: the Havell edition of John James Audubon's well-loved BIRDS OF AMERICA. The Teyler Museum in Haarlem, Holland made their copy of the original work available for use as a model. The Museum had bought their copy through Audubon's son as part of the original subscription in 1839. After long deliberation, the extremely complex but highly accurate process of color photo-lithography was chosen as the most appropriate printing method. The best exponents of this art were the renowned Dutch printing firm of NV Fotolitho Inrichting Drommel at Zandvoort who were willing to undertake the task of printing each plate in up to eight different colors. The original Havell edition was published on handmade rag paper and the publishers were determined that the paper of their edition should match the original. Unhappy with the commercially available papers, they turned to the traditional paper manufacturers G. Schut & Zonen (founded in 1625), who, using 100% unbleached cotton rags, were able to produce a wove paper of the highest quality, with each sheet bearing a watermark unique to the edition: G. Schut & Zonen [JR monogram] Audubon [OT monogram]. The publishers and their dedicated team completed their task late in 1972 and the results of these labors became known as the "Amsterdam Audubon." 250 copies were published and sold by subscription, with the plates available bound or unbound. Given all this careful preparation, it is not surprising that the prints have the look and feel of the original Havell edition. The Havell edition was expensive at the time of publication and this has not changed. The last complete copy to appear on the market sold for more than $10,000,000 in London in 2010, and the increasingly rare individual plates from this edition, when they do appear, generally sell for between $2,500 and $150,000 depending on the image. The quality of the Amsterdam Audubon plates is apparent to any discerning collector and it is becoming ever clearer that they offer the most attractive alternative to the Havell edition plates, given the latter's spiraling prices. The idea for his great work came to Audubon after his meeting with the distinguished ornithologist Alexander Wilson at Louisville in 1810, but it was not until 1826 that he felt ready to set sail for England in search of a publisher. In the intervening sixteen years he had time both to perfect his style of drawing from specimens mounted on wires as an aid to composition, to assemble a remarkable portfolio of drawings, and, perhaps most importantly, to develop the single-minded determination that was to be so essential in his efforts to realize his ambition. John James Audubon, the illegitimate son of French sea captain Jean Audubon and Mlle Jeannne Rabin, his Creole mistress, was born in Les Cayes, Santo Domingo on April 26, 1785. His mother died soon after his birth and in 1791, Audubon was brought back to France to live at Nantes under the care of his father's wife, Anne Moynet. The arrangement was evidently a happy one, and both Audubon and his half-sister (Jean's illegitimate daughter by another mistress) were legally adopted in 1794. Audubon later wrote that he quickly came to both love and admire his adopted mother, though her indulgence of his preference for exploring the surrounding countryside to attending to his schoolwork, was perhaps largely responsible for his lack of formal education. Audubon's first arrival in America was in 1803, when, following the loss of the family's fortune in Santo Domingo, his father dispatched him to eastern Pennsylvania. He was to stay with a Quaker lawyer, Miers Fisher, who had been acting as Audubon senior's business agent, and represent the family's interests in the development of the lead deposits which had been found on Mill Grove (a farm near Philadelphia, which had been bought, sight unseen, by Audubon's father). It was here that his early interest in drawing bird specimens grew, and here that he met and married (in 1808) Lucy Bakewell, the daughter of a neighbor. They set up home firstly in Louisville, and later Henderson, Kentucky. The new species of birds to be found in the virgin wilderness of Kentucky supplied Audubon with a large number of subjects to both draw and hunt, and allowed him to develop the lifelike action-packed ornithological images that were to become the hallmark of his work. Following his bankruptcy in 1820, Audubon decided to concentrate on his painting, and he set out for Louisiana with the intention of adding to the tally of species captured in his portfolio. During this period he worked as a traveling artist and drawing instructor, drawing birds from Mississippi as well as Louisiana and eventually settling with Lucy near New Orleans at a plantation called Bayou Sara. By 1824 Audubon's plans for THE BIRDS OF AMERICA were coalescing. The work was to be issued in eighty parts of five plates per part, for a total of 400 plates (this was finally expanded to 435 showing some 1,065 different species in eighty-seven parts) on large format paper: this was dictated by Audubon's determination that all the known species were to be shown, and that they should all be life-size. After unsuccessful attempts to get the work published in both Philadelphia and New York, in became clear that the only hope of publication lay in Europe, and Audubon sailed for England in 1826. In England Audubon arranged a number of successful exhibitions of his drawings, where the "dramatic impact of his ambitious, complex pictures and a romantic image as 'the American woodsman' secured Audubon entry into a scientific community much preoccupied with little-known lands." Amongst the friends he made from this community, were William Swainson, a gifted ornithologist, who taught Audubon the niceties of technical ornithology, William MacGillivray, a brilliant Scottish naturalist-anatomist, who, later, was to contribute to and edit Audubon's ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY, and Patrick Neill, printer and zoologist, who recommended William Home Lizars of Edinburgh as an engraver who would do justice to Audubon's work. Lizars was so impressed with Audubon's work that he agreed to put aside the work he was doing for Prideaux John Selby and Sir William Jardine, Britain's foremost ornithologists of the time, and concentrate on the engraving and printing of Audubon's subjects. Lizars' involvement in the project began in 1827, but turned out to be short-lived: after producing only ten plates, all of which are represented in the present selection, Lizars' colorists went on strike and Audubon was forced to find another engraver. This setback proved to be only temporary, however, and Audubon quickly established an excellent working and personal relationship with both Robert Havell, senior, and his son, Robert Havell, junior. Havell senior died in 1832, but between 1828 and 1838 Havell junior was involved as engraver (or in the case of the Havell plates as re-toucher) of all 425 of the images that go to make up the highest achievement of ornithological art and the greatest of all bird books. Less

Buy from: