Search Results: Titles starting with D from 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop

½ plate daguerreotype, in original case, covers separated, with Mayall's gilt logo for his Daguerreotype Institution at 433 Strand. Affixed to the verso of the plate is a "Portrait Check" from the "American Daguerreotype Institution, 433, West Strand" dated in manuscript October 11, 1848 and with the name of the subject, "J. R. Brodhead, Esq." The plate is in excellent condition, with rich tones.
A splendid half-plate daguerreotype of Herman Melville's advisor and agent John Brodhead. John Romeyn Brodhead (1814-1873) was a historian and a member of the American diplomatic corps. Best remembered for his services as Herman Melville's agent in London, Brodhead had known Melville and his family since their youth. Gansevoort Melville, secretary of the American legation in London, served as his brother's literary agent for the publication of Typee. When Gansevoort died in May 1846, his boyhood friend John Brodhead was appointed to succeed him.
Brodhead's literary relationship with the young… Read More

This splendid photograph shows costumed dancers and musicians posed in the middle of a performance. The hands of the two dancers at the center are about to meet in a clap, and the drummer raises a stick to strike his drum. A thatched roof building and palms are in the background.
"A troupe of twenty-six dancers and musicians, some with elaborate costumes and masks: fifteen are girls, seven boys, and four men. In the background is a traditional bamboo house with a pandanus thatched roof together with sugar cane and banana trees. Fifteen of those present are lakhon performers. Eleven of them are on the left (one standing resting a sword on her shoulder, four seated along an rattan chair, and six kneeling behind the musicians), two sit on the floor in the centre, and two on the seat on the right. The six khon performers perform a scene from the Ramakien, derived from the Ramayana. They include (centre) a yaksha (giant) fighting with Phra Ram; to the right of them, two other yakshas; seated… Read More

First illustrated edition of Vitruvius's Ten Books on Architecture, a landmark in the history of architecture. This is the only work on architecture to survive from antiquity. It was Vitruvius (ca. 90-20 BC) who famously declared that a structure must be durable, useful, and beautiful. His terms for order, arrangement, proportion, and fitness for purpose have guided architects for centuries. Vitruvius served in the campaigns of Julius Caesar, and he was involved in the restoration of Roman aqueducts. In ancient Rome, architecture encompassed not just the design of buildings but also civil and mechanical engineering, construction, military engineering, and urban planning.In the early fifteenth century Vitruvius was rediscovered, and its publication proved to be one of the key events of the Italian Renaissance. "The Vitruvian text became for Renaissance architecture what biblical studies had been for theology" (Millard).Vitruvius's Ten Books on Architecture exerted incalculable influence on the… Read More

Original wrappers. Very good.
FIRST EDITION. This work on Albert Einstein's theory of gravitation contains a foreword by Einstein. Freundlich is best known for his attempts to experimentally test the general theory of relativity using astronomical observations based on the gravitational redshift.Freundlich worked as an assistant at the University Observatory in Berlin at the time he published this work. In 1920 he moved to the Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam, where he was director from 1921-33

FIRST EDITION of The Double Helix, preceding the publication in book form in late February 1968. Signed by James Watson on the front cover of each issue.
"The 1968 publication of James Watson's two-part thriller, The Double Helix, in The Atlantic Monthly left both the scientific and literary worlds atwitter" (Fausto-Sterling, 'Gender and Science in the DNA Story,' Science November 8, 2002).
The Double Helix is one of the most famous science books of the 20th century. The Modern Library placed it at number 7 in its list of the best nonfiction books of the century, the New York Public Library included it in its 1996 Books of the Century exhibition, and the Library of Congress named The Double Helix one of the eighty-eight Books That Shaped America.Two issues. Original wrappers. Very good. Cloth case