Boston-area businesses with full-page advertisements in this publication include a silversmith/jeweler, an apothecary, an upholsterer, a pianoforte manufacturer, and an ink maker; also provided are both an extensive business directory and an index of the smaller in-text advertisements promoting local merchants.

Binding:  Signed binding of brown straight-grained cloth, front cover gilt-stamped with vignette of the city and blind-stamped with two female figures representing Agriculture (holding a scythe) and Law and Order (holding scales), back cover similarly blind-stamped with central stamp of Benjamin Bradley & Co. bookbinders.

•  Drake, Almanacs, 4446; Spawn & Kinsella, American Signed Bindings, 56. Not in Phillips, List of Maps of America.   Binding as above, spine showing minimal wear; clean and beautiful. Front pastedown with ticket of a Massachusetts bookseller. Endpapers with offsetting; map age-toned with offsetting, outer edges slightly ragged; one index page with chip to outer margin, with loss of a few letters. Pages lightly age-toned. An excellent copy.  (26684)

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•  Drake 13641; Shoemaker 29925.   Uncut copy; later stitching and later oversewing; dog-earing and a bit tattered. Title-page and p. [48] age-darkened. Occasional mild staining.  (10027)

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•  Drake 707; Shaw & Shoemaker 13185.   Removed from a nonce volume and resewn.  (9489)

The volume opens with an oversized, folding map of the city, with a note that the map is a specimen of a new type of plate printing. An advertisement on the back free endpaper mentions that Dickinson has “sold out his extensive Printing Office . . . [and] will now apply his whole attention to his favorite business, the manufacture of Printing Type,” providing stereotyping and music printing as well as “more than 120 different kinds of Job Type.”

Binding: Signed by Damrell & Moore of Boston, with their blind-stamp on the back cover: Brown cloth embossed with foliate designs, front cover with gilt-stamped decorative title.

•  Binding as above, covers with small, fairly unobtrusive spots of discoloration, cloth a bit rubbed over corners and edges and chipping over spine extremities. Map with small holes to two corners; pages clean, with memoranda leaves unused.

The last leaf, filled on both sides, lists a “Grand Assortment” of books available from “J O H N M E I N”;  these are of a variety of sorts, but the one that gets an all-caps headline is a new edition of Fordyce's Sermons for Young Women!

•  Evans 10687; Drake 3164; ESTC w22665.   Sewn in original marbled wrappers. Usual foxing and light age-toning of almanacs of this era and region. Some dog-earing and “thumbing”; small piece of wrapper missing from lower spine. Else very good.  (18214)

•  Original front wrapper present, but not rear one. Some chipping and definite wear, especially along spine. Old ink notations. A good copy. (9383)

•  Drake 3819; Shaw & Shoemaker 43108.   Uncut copy; old stitching. A very good copy.  (9622)

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•  Drake 4017.   Uncut, stitched, partly unopened.  (21434)

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•  Drake 4251.   Stitching renewed. Some loss of paper and small amount of text on first four leaves to hungry rodent. Waterstains.  (21375)

•  ESTC T105844. Period-style quarter calf with marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-ruled raised bands. Title-page and a few others stamped by a now-defunct institution. Some offsetting to margins of first and final leaves, pages otherwise clean. A nice little Anglo-Americanum, very evocative of its era.

The present volume was the last to appear of four issues of this annual, which commenced its run in 1824. The binding style, which incorporates a wallet-pocket and pencil holder, is uncommon, though the first such American bindings date from the late 1790s.

•  Faxon 763 (for the 1826 edition); Shoemaker 26110. Green straight-grain morocco wallet binding, framed in wide gilt rolls; worn, with portions of binding faded to brown and hinges tender. Back pastedown with pencilled ownership inscription; some engagement pages filled in. Several leaves removed, some leaving traces. Some plates with spots of foxing. Clearly not only used but actually carried around on a regular basis; still appealing and intriguing.