KITE'S TOWN & COUNTRY ALMANAC, FOR THE YEAR 1813, Being the First after Bissextile or Leap Year

Philadelphia: Printed by Lydia R. Bailey for Benjamin and Thomas Kite, 1812. Original Wrappers. Fair binding. 12mo. [48] pp. Stitched into self wrappers. Heavily worn with loss to the bottom of the cover title including, unfortunately, the imprint which bears Bailey's name. This same loss affects the note to the reader on the verso of this page; the second leaf containing an anatomical illustrations is quite ragged with a couple of large closed tears but all text is present; the balance of the almanac is in more stabile if fair condition with dog-eared corners, early tidelines, an occasional closed tear, and one leaf that has an 1/8" tear in the center of a leaf with minor loss of text.

This is an early almanac printed by Bailey, who took over her husband Robert Bailey's print shop after his death in 1808 and ran in until she retired and closed the shop in 1861. Karen Nipps in her biographical sketch writes, "Bailey was the master printer of a shop that at its peak was one of the largest in the city, employing more than forty workers. . . . [S]he transformed her husband's floundering business into one of the busiest printing establishments in Philadelphia. Although previous generations of printers' widows had continued their husbands' careers, they had done so only long enough to remarry, have a mature son take over, or fold the business; Lydia Bailey made the business a success and never relinquished control of it" (Oxford American National Biography). For better than a half a century Bailey was a force with which to reckon. An imperfect, but important imprint that captures the mainstay of her print-shop's output. Shaw & Shoemaker 25797; Drake 10972; Nipps Checklist, 70.