Search Results: Americana from Reginald C. Williams Rare Books

Octavo, original blind stamped brown-gray cloth. Interior generally clean with mild & occasional foxing, mere trace of damp staining at the rear, very mild edgewear, minimal soiling to original cloth. A very good copy now housed in a brown custom cloth clamshell box. First edition of the publisher and editor's memoir issued the year after his murder—killed by "five bullets in his heart, while defending his fourth press from an armed, arsonist mob"—only two years after he denounced the lynching by fire of a free black man, as an act of "savage barbarity," with introduction by John Quincy Adams, a seminal record of a key event in America's abolitionist battle and the history of the First Amendment. A book seldom found in the publisher's cloth.

Original brown cloth, original printed paper spine label; pp. 5-227, (228), (blank leaf). with 11 haunting wood engravings. Text has moderate foxing throughout as do the plates. First Boston edition, issued by famed abolitionist Isaac Knapp, of Bourne's provocative work, preceded only by the 1834 Middleton, CT. first edition, this incendiary antebellum work is by the controversial minister who was expelled from the church for verbally attacking ministers and slave-owners in his congregation—"one of the first radical abolitionists"—featuring eleven woodcut-engraved illustrations of slavery's "appalling and atrocious criminality," exceptional in unrestored original cloth."Bourne was a crucial figure in the history of the antislavery movement… One of the first radical abolitionists… he was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833) and a frequent contributor to Garrison's famous paper The Liberator" (ANB). Born in England, Bourne emigrated to the U.S. in 1804. Following a brief… Read More

FIRST EDITION. Octavo, publisher's cloth. An undisputed classic in the philosophy of social science, the substantial content of which marks a continuation of Popper's relentless pursuit of the principal of falsification, as outlined in the seminal Logic of Scientific Discovery, brought to bear on the methodology of historicist social science. It is a broad rebuttal of holism, that is, the view that social groups and societies are greater than the sum of their parts and can be treated as 'organic' entities in their own right, as well as the predominance of the dialectical conceptions of social change in the methodology of the social sciences. This copy belonged to Philosopher Sidney Hook (December 20, 1902 July 12, 1989) who was an American philosopher of the pragmatist school known for his contributions to the philosophy of history, the philosophy of education, political theory, and ethics (Wikipedia). Tipped in is the actual invoice for the book purchase dated from Blackwell s Ltd. dated 11/18/57. A… Read More

FIRST EDITION in English (French edition published on 1777). Full contemporary speckled calf, gilt title on red spine label, full gilt decoration to spine, & gilt decoration to board edges; A bright very good copy with front hinge slightly starting but strong, early ink owner name/date inside front cover, & later bookplate to fep; 242 pages + Errata. Size: 4.75"x8.25." An attractive copy."In 1777 Maury published the Essai sur l'Ă©loquence de la chaire which, with many editions and revisions, was to be his chief bid for literary fame. Stressing nature and good sense, it was written for a 'philosophical' audience, and praised eloquence where the author found it, in Bossuet and the church fathers, in Rousseau and Voltaire. He was admitted ot the French Academy in 1785." - Paul H. Beik, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, October, 1951.Jean-Siffrein Maury (1746-1817), French Cardinal and statesman, sometime Archbishop of Nicea. Maury was held in high esteem by the French monarchy, and later… Read More

FIRST EDITION. 129pp., 4 unnumbered leaves of illustrated plates. Publisher's original pictorial cloth binding sturdy, spine and edges distinctly age-toned; outer and inner hinges strong; leaves a little shaken between pages 64 and 65 else contents clean and attractive, title-page excellent. An excellent copy that's now Mylar protected and housed in a custom slipcase. Dewey's first published work of length on education. A highly influential publication in its own right, it would also lay the foundation for his later work. In the lectures included in the initial publication, Dewey proposes a psychological, social, and political framework for progressive education. Notably, this includes collaborative practical experimentation as the central element of school work. He argues that the progressive approach is both an inevitable product of the Industrial Revolution and a natural fit with the psychology of children. A final chapter details some of the experiments done at the University of Chicago Laboratory… Read More

Octavo, original blind-stamped brown cloth. Text generally fresh with light scattered foxing, gilt on spine surprisingly brighter than expected, cloth with rubbing and wear along the hinges, but fully intact. Uncommon, especially so in publisher s cloth. First edition of Timothy Mather Cooley's important biography of Reverend Lemuel Haynes, who fought in the American Revolution as a Minuteman, penned one of the earliest attacks on slavery by an African American and is considered the "first black person to lead a white church. Born to an African father and white mother, Haynes was abandoned in infancy and raised as an indentured servant to a white family. After his release, he "lent his own newly gained liberty to the defense of American freedom" when he became a Minuteman, joined the Continental army, and fought with Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga (Bay in Americanism, 25). "In the army, perhaps inspired by his Revolutionary experiences, Haynes penned Liberty Further Extended, an attack on the institution… Read More

FIRST EDITION. In publisher's illustrated wrappers with the very scarce patterned glassine wrapper. Bound with string. (16) p., and 8 plates (one double). Illustrated motion picture program for the 1915 American silent epic drama film, directed and co-produced by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1992. The glassine has some chirping and small tear but overall very good. Internally, the book is clean with a rare tipped in color flag which heads the chapter The Story of the Picture. Overall a pleasing copy of a scarce item from America s first epic film. The most controversial motion picture of all time; It s considered extremist in its overt racism and twisted depiction of the South during reconstruction, but aesthetically and technically brilliant. A film which remains such a hot topic more than 100 years after its… Read More

FIRST EDITION of Wells' first book. Complete in two octavo volumes. First edition, FIRST ISSUE (in green cloth, and without blind-stamping on the front board). Two octavo volumes. x,149, [1, blank]; viii, 157, [1, blank] pages. With forty-seven plates (drawn by Wells himself) inserted in both volumes, as well as publisher's catalogues inserted in the back of each volume. Publisher's full green cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Some moderate wear to bindings, hinges either cracking or starting. Overall, a very good set of this rare item now housed in a green cloth clamshell case with a leather label. Hammond E1. Today he's known for such classic science fiction novels as The Time Machine (1895) and The War of the Worlds (1898), so people are often surprised to learn that the first original book-length work published by H.G. Wells (1866-1946) was a textbook. Wells had studied biology at the Normal School of Science in South Kensington, London under the great T.H. Huxley, on a scholarship for teacher… Read More

Octavo, original blue cloth, original dust jacket. First British edition of Eartha Kitt's intimate autobiography which was published a year earlier in New York. In Thursday s Child, Eartha Kitt recalls her poor childhood and early career as a performer whose trademark highly mannered singing style, colored with gargling growl added to her sultry brilliance as a distinctive singer and actress (New York Times). With 28 photographic images. A near-fine copy in a bright price-clipped dustwrapper with a stunning image of Kitt on the cover whch displays nicely.

Early printings of the first collection of prose and verse works by Edgar Allan Poe; Vol. I II and III first published in 1850, as sets of two (1850), three (1851) and finally four volumes (1856), the set being early editions of the first three volumes and presumably a first edition of Vol. IV. With a portrait frontispiece, and a facsimile letter laid in. All four volumes signed by A. W. Thomson (1827-1881), a Confederate Chief Surgeon for South Carolina. Foxing to each volume, and heavy spotting to Volume IV; minor shelf wear, and spines moderately sunned. Plum colored cloth, with gilt lettering and designs. Top edge of Vol. I and II gilt. A Very Good set overall when one considers that not very many of these sets surface intact in the publisher's cloth. The set is now housed in a custom open-ended brown cloth slipcase with a large Morocco label.

Clean original maroon cloth with gilt title on spine. Pictorial frontispiece and half title page. Additional fourteen steel engravings. Interior of text is tight, clean & intact. A few lightly foxed pages. Prior owners' inscription. Spine ends lightly rubbed, spine sunned, else a near-fine copy. Contents: Superintendent of Nurses; Ladies who ministered to the sick, wounded, in camp, field and hospitals; Ladies who forwarded supplies to the hospitals; Services among the freedmen and refugees; Services in soldiers' homes; Services in the National Cause; Services in soldiers' homes; Services in the National Cause. Military, Civil War, Nursing; Steel engravings; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 799 pages.