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

8vo. Six volumes. Contemporary calf, nicely rebacked at an early date, spines gilt. Some wear, browning. An attractive set.Contains the following: Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and Lust's Dominion; John Lyly, Mother Bombie, Endymion, and Midas; Middleton, Women Beware Women, A Trick to Catch the Old One, The Spanish Gypsy, The Changeling, More Dissemblers Besides Women; Dekker, Wonder of a Kingdom, Old Fortunatus; Rowley, A New Wonder, a Woman Never Vext; Webster, Appius and Virginia; Chapman, May Day, Monsieur D'Olive, Bussy D'Ambois; Webster and Rowley, Thracian Wonder; Marston's Antonio and Mellida, What you Will, and Parasitaster: or, the Fawn; Heywood, The English Traveller, The Royal King and Loyal Subject, A Challenge for Beauty.
This very scarce set was conceived as a continuation of Dodsley's famous Select Collection of Old Plays (1744).

Quarto. Original boards, paper printed label, light green coated endpapers. Front free endpaper with abrasion and small hole where the presentation recipient's name was rubbed out. Slipcase.
The privately printed, limited edition of Lowell's celebrated Harvard Commemoration Ode. This is, after the Gettysburg Address, the foremost Civil War tribute to the war dead. In it Lowell declared Lincoln to be the "New birth of our soul, the first American." Century observed that "Lowell was the first of the leading American writers to see clearly and fully and enthusiastically proclaim th greatness of Abraham Lincoln." Into this work Lowell "poured a conception of Lincoln which may justly be said to be today the accepted idea which Americans hold of their great president" (Horace Scudder).
Lowell recited this poem at Harvard on 21 July 1865. Many of his classmates served in the Civil War and a number died. When the Ode appeared in print in the September issue of Atlantic Monthly it became famous.
This is copy… Read More

Original cloth, paper spine label (chipped). Very good. Cloth case
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. From the library of Millard Fillmore, 13th president of the United States (1850-1853), with his signatures dated May 22, 1863 on the title and on the front pastedown.
Huxley, "Darwin's bulldog," was the leading defender and promoter of Darwinism in the years following the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859.In this popular work Huxley attempts to "disencumber the subject of its difficulties, simplify its statements, relieve it of technicalities, and bring it so distinctly within the horizon of ordinary apprehension that persons of common sense may judge for themselves. … Such is the character of the present volume" (preface).
This volume reflects the wide dissemination of Darwin's ideas in the 1860s.

THE OPENING OF THE SUEZ CANAL. 13½ x 9½ inches. Albumen photograph mounted on paper, annotated in pencil "Port Said 16 Nov 1869" in the lower left. Excellent condition. This photograph depicts the harbor and canal on the day of the opening of the Suez Canal, the "greatest engineering feat of the nineteenth century" (Smith). "Clearly, the canal's opening festivities placed Egypt in a new way on the European cultural map" (Haddad, "Digging to India: Modernity, Imperialism, and the Suez Canal"). The opening of the Suez Canal immediately transformed world trade. Connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea allowed ships to sail between Europe and Asia without navigating around Africa. Trade between East and West grew at a record rate. "The construction and completion of the great Suez Canal . . . [was] one of the most remarkable engineering enterprises of the age, one that will be an infinitely . . . important boon to commerce" (W. H. Davenport Adams). "Men of the nineteenth century have pierced the… Read More

FIRST EDITION of the works of Irenaeus, "the father of Christian theology," as he is widely known.

Irenaeus is one of the most important of the early Church Fathers. Writing at the end of the second century, with the authority of direct links to the followers of the original Apostles, he defended the Church against existential threats and helped to establish its fundamental underpinnings.

Irenaeus's principal work is Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies), "one of the most precious remains of early Christian antiquity." The work comprises a refutation of the Gnostic heresies, then a serious threat to the Church, and exposition and defense of the Catholic faith" (Roberts, ed. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies). This is "the chief work of Irenaeus and truly of the highest importance; it … constitutes an invaluable source of information on the most ancient ecclesiastical literature from its beginnings to the end of the second century. In refuting the heterodox systems Irenaeus often opposes to… Read More

4to. 18 fine original watercolors on heavy card. Original embossed black morocco gilt. Rubbed, extremities worn, minimal dampstaining. Very good condition, with the color fresh and vibrant and the plates clean.
FIRST EDITION, a unique pre-publication proof copy with 18 fine watercolors, the original art used as the basis for the lithographs in the published edition of Flowers from My Garden.
Laura Gordon Munson (1825-1900) was a Connecticut artist. Lydia H. Sigourney, the "Sweet Singer of Hartford," contributed the introductory poem. Munson's frontispiece is a large basket of flowers that includes many of those illustrated separately, viz., crocus, pansies, forget-me-not, lily of the valley, rose campion, rose, fairy bell, day lily, thunbergia, heliotrope, cypress vine, morning glory, jessamine, verbenas, blue fringed gentian, and autumn leaves. Each of the eighteen watercolors is accompanied by a poem on a separate text leaf. Poets include Hooper, May, Hunt, Longfellow, Hale, and… Read More

This original pen and ink drawing of Walt Whitman is mounted at the front of an 1888 edition of Leaves of Grass. The likeness of a jaunty, casual, Whitman wearing his trademark slouch hat takes its cue from the famous 1855 Hollyer engraving, but here we see an older Whitman with a full beard.8 x 4 1/2 in. Mounted to front pastedown of an edition of Leaves of Grass
published by David McKay in Philadelphia in 1888 (original mustard cloth, front free endpaper removed, inner hinges tender, good condition). Soiling to mounted drawing.

This striking image, titled Tolowa Dancing Headdress (plate 455), was published as a photogravure in The North American Indian, vol. 13, 1924. Approx. 14 x 17 inches. Accompanied by a custom archival wall-mount back lit light box. Excellent condition. A stunning display piece.
This is a splendid original glass plate made for Edward Curtis's The North American Indian, the greatest photographic work on Native Americans. Curtis, one of the greatest American artists of his era, was the most celebrated photographer of North American Indians. Over the course of thirty-five years, he took tens of thousands of photographs of Indians from more than eighty tribes. "Never before have we seen the Indians of North America so close to the origins of their humanity, their sense of themselves in the world, their innate dignity and self-possession" (N. Scott Momaday). Curtis's photographs are "an absolutely unmatched masterpiece of visual anthropology, and one of the most thorough, extensive and profound photograph… Read More

Mammoth albumen print. This beautiful photograph was formerly affixed back-to-back with another mounted photograph, giving a very faint linen-like texture on the surface. Thin strip of linen tape on mount. A splendid print with rich tonal range, worthy of the finest collections.
CALIFORNIA PHOTOGRAPHY PIONEER. Charles Leander Weed is generally considered the first photographer to work in Yosemite. His 1859 trip there yielded approximately twenty 10 x 14 inch views and forty stereo images. For his 1864 photographic expedition to the Yosemite Valley and the Big Trees of Calaveras, Weed used a larger camera to produce this splendid mammoth-plate print (more than twice the size of the 1859 views), as well as a new series of stereo views.
Weed exhibited his mammoth prints at the 1867 Paris International Exposition. Lawrence & Houseworth's 1870 Catalogue offered them for sale and observed, "This series of views, together with the stereoscopic collection, were awarded the bronze medal at the… Read More

Original brown cloth. Fine. Slipcase.
First edition. The fine A. E. Newton copy of Our Old Home, inscribed by Hawthorne on the front endpaper: "Dr Gason 12 via della Mercede." Dr John Gason, Fellow of the College of Physicians in Ireland, is listed at Via della Mercede in various guidebooks from the 1850s-60s. The 1869 Handbook of Rome and its Environs notes that "Dr G, who is also an accoucheur, practices during the summer months at the baths of Lucca." The Hawthornes and Dr Gason were both in Rome in the late 1850s, and possibly had mutual friends from Bagni di Lucca.