Philadelphia: B. Franklin and D. Hall, 1755.. Folding handcolored engraved map by James Turner after Lewis Evans. Quarto. Full tan polished tree... More

Philadelphia: B. Franklin and D. Hall, 1755.. Folding handcolored engraved map by James Turner after Lewis Evans. Quarto. Full tan polished tree calf by Riviere, covers with a gilt roll tool border, spine in six compartments with raised bands, red morocco label in the second compartment, the others with an overall repeat decoration in gilt, marbled endpapers, a.e.g. Map backed on linen. Very good. One of the most important maps of the British colonies done prior to Independence, a landmark in American cartography and an important Franklin printing. Lewis Evans' map, titled "A General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America," shows the east coast of North America from Montreal and New England to the northern border of North Carolina, and also includes the Ohio valley in the west. The Evans map appeared in 1755, the same year as John Mitchell's famous map, with Evans drawing from his original surveys and Fry and Jefferson's 1753 map of Virginia. Evans' map acknowledges French claims to all lands northwest of St. Lawrence Fort, resulting in criticism from New York, notably the New York Mercury. Despite the controversy, Evans's work was very popular (there were eighteen editions between 1755 and 1814), and was famously used by General Braddock during the French and Indian War. Evans gives a detailed geographical description of the middle and southern colonies, particularly notable for an early description of the Ohio country, and gives a good description of the Carolina back country. Evans was also eager for the British to expand into the South, especially West Florida, to challenge the French and Spanish in the Gulf. According to Governor Pownall, writing in 1776, the map was the authority for settling boundary disputes in the region as it so accurately depicted the region. The present example is a very fine copy of the second edition, first issue of the text published by Benjamin Franklin (i.e. without an additional London imprint below Franklin's) and contains a rare example of the first issue of the map (i.e. without "The Lakes Cataraqui" just north of Lake Ontario). Significantly, the map present in this copy is with lovely full period hand-coloring. Sabin notes that many copies of Evans' tract do not include the map, and that only some copies are fully colored, as is this copy. On this second edition of the text, published the same year as the first, Miller notes: "This revised second edition of Evan's analysis of his General Map of the Middle British Colonies is virtually a page-for-page resetting of the first edition with sub- titles added on pp. 6 and 11, and the numeral 2 inserted to the left of the signature on the directional line of the first two leaves of each quire in fours." "The map is considered by historians to be the most ambitious performance of its kind undertaken in America up to that time, and its publication was a milestone in the development of printing arts in the colonial period" - Schwartz & Ehrenberg. MILLER 606. CAMPBELL 543. EVANS 7412. SABIN 23175. HOWES E226. CHURCH 1003. WHEAT & BRUN 298. BROWN, EARLY MAPS OF THE OHIO VALLEY 41. CRESSWELL, "COLONY TO COMMONWEALTH," pp.53-54, 82. DEGREES OF LATITUDE 34. GARRISON, CARTOGRAPHY OF PENNSYLVANIA, pp.269-74. PHILADELPHIA: THREE CENTURIES OF AMERICAN ART, pp.64-67. SCHWARTZ & EHRENBERG, p.165. STEPHENSON & McKEE, VIRGINIA IN MAPS, p.82. SUAREZ, SHEDDING THE VEIL 57. THE WORLD ENCOMPASSED 255. Klinefelter, "Lewis Evans and his Maps" in TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, Vol. 61, no. 7 (1971). Stevens, LEWIS EVANS AND HIS MAP (London, 1905). Less

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With a bibliographical essay by A. Edward Newton. New York : Gabriel Wells, 1921. Designed by Bruce Rogers and printed by William Edwin Rudge.... More

With a bibliographical essay by A. Edward Newton. New York : Gabriel Wells, 1921. Designed by Bruce Rogers and printed by William Edwin Rudge. Folio, full black blindstamped gilt-lettered morocco by Stikeman & Co. (corners a little rubbed, a few mm loss to foot of spine), gilt dentelles, [6] pp. preliminary text, with an original leaf of the Gutenberg Bible tipped-in. The leaf measures 388 x 287 mm. printed on recto and verso, black gothic lettering of forty-two lines in double columns, rubricated in red, with headlines, chapter numbers, and large initial letters in red and blue, being three two-line initials (two 'E's' and one 'P'), three Roman numeral verse numbers, and the headline. A very good example with wide margins, some minor foxing, the ink black and crisp. The text is the Vulgate Latin text of Jeremiah Chapters 15 and 16 in their entirety, with the closing ten lines of Chapter 14 and first eight lines of Chapter 17. "Then said the LORD unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth." A LEAF FROM THE FIRST WESTERN BOOK PRINTED BY MOVABLE TYPE. "Its printers were competing in the market hitherto supplied by the producers of high-class manuscripts. The design of the book and the layout of the book were therefore based on the book-hand and manuscript design of the day, and a very high standard of press-work was required--and obtained--to enable the new mechanical product to compete successfully with its hand-produced rivals. Standards were set in quality of paper and blackness of ink, in design and professional skill, which the printers of later generations have found difficult to maintain." (Printing and the Mind of Man). Only forty-eight copies of the Bible are known, most of which are incomplete. The provenance of this leaf is the imperfect Mannheim-Zouch-Sabin copy, divided into leaves and sections by New York bookseller Gabriel Wells nearly a century ago. The Gutenberg Bible, the first complete book printed in Western culture using the radical technology of movable pieces of type, is perhaps the most famous and important book in the world. Complete examples are now rarely procurable in the marketplace, yet a single leaf, extracted from an incomplete copy of the Bible by New York dealer Gabriel Wells in 1921, captivates the imagination when one contemplates the impact this revolution of the Renaissance had on humanity. Printing and the Mind of Man 1. Exhibited: 'The Mirror of the World', State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, October 2009 - October 2011, alternating on view with the example of The Noble Fragment held in that institution's collection. Less

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