Click the interior image for an enlargement.

•  ESTC R24103; Lowndes 888; Wing (rev. ed.) S6383 (noting the true publication date). On Gibson, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Recent quarter calf and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title and publication labels and gilt-stamped compartment decorations, leather edges tooled in blind. Lower (closed) edges and title-page recto and verso institutionally rubber-stamped; last page with affixed printed errata slip. Back fly-leaf with early inked annotation; text with a very few instances of inked bracketing in an early hand, pages otherwise clean. All edges speckled in red and brown.  (25422)

Scarce

•  Creased with slight soiling along crease, edges slightly ragged, otherwise in good condition; now in a Mylar folder. Tipped onto a blank leaf bearing a watermark of 1826.

•  ESTC T8304. Contemporary full calf, covers framed in blind using double fillets on three sides and a floral roll on the fourth; rebacked and corners redone at some point using lighter calf, gilt-stamped leather title label. Abraded and worn, with front hinge(inside) tender. Pages age-toned, some more so than others; yet the volume almost entirely free of spotting. (Our image is a bit distorted, above right — Nutt & Gosling could print in straight lines, and did!)

ESTC describes only Scottish holdings of this item

•  ESTC T200651. Tipped onto a leaf of 19th-century paper; in a Mylar folder. Darkened, last page with a short closed tear and with light-colored staining partially obscuring a few letters.

Respectably produced in the contemporary style of English law-printing, set almost entirely in gothic with a large initial containing trumpet-blowing cherubim.

•  ESTC N51532. Disbound from a nonce volume, now in a Mylar folder. Title-page with small tear to outer margin, lower outer corner lost. Pages clean and crisp.

•  Removed from a volume and old sewing holes visible in inner margins. Last leaf detached and reattached with archival-quality tissue tape. A clean copy.

•  Removed from a volume and resewn. A clean copy.

A good example of the solid, workaday English law-printing of its period, opening with an attractive foliate initial crowned with a seated griffin.

•  ESTC N57352. Removed from a nonce volume. Pages clean save for some very minor browning in outer margins.

•  Original cloth over cardboard, front cover with printed and illustrated paper label; lightly faded, some discoloration and soiling. Sewing loosening but holding. Text clean. A delight.  (26798)

Click the interior image for an enlargement.

Following Hillhouse's discussion of his purpose and reasoning, the actual amendments have a separate title-page.

First edition.  Second and third editions were printed at New Haven by Oliver Steele & Co. in the same year as this first.

•  Sabin 31883; Shaw & Shoemaker 15230.   Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with printed paper label. Pages with a few scattered spots of light staining and occasional early inked corrections; old stitching holes in inner margins. Page edges untrimmed. In fact, quite a nice copy.  (25210)

A New York printing was issued simultaneously.

•  Howes S218; Library Company, Afro-Americana, 4994; Sabin 33240.   Recent very handsome black moiré cloth, spine with printed paper label. Original printed paper front wrapper bound in. Wrapper, title-page, and last text page tattered (wrapper significantly, pages less so) and now mounted; wrapper with inked ownership inscription dated 1896. Pages age-toned, with intermittent foxing.  (25316)

slavery — which the author defends as a legal institution, but attacks as a detriment to the state's overall prosperity

•  Sabin 33370; Howes H739.   Publisher's cloth, vol. I (now) olive and vol. II brown, covers blind-stamped, spines with gilt-stamped title and gilt-stamped seal of Virginia (“Sic semper tyrannis”); corners and spine extremities rubbed, sides with areas of light discoloration, endpapers darkened. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplate on front pastedowns, call number inked on front free endpaper of vol. I and front fly-leaf of vol. II, vol. II lacking front free endpaper. No other markings. Upper margins of vol. I with small areas of light waterstaining, extending to touch top lines of text at back of volume only; vol. II with similar light waterstaining never touching text. Vol. II with occasional lightly pencilled marginalia and marks of emphasis, many pertaining to the perceived value of the footnotes and references.  (26452)

He was shot to death in his study on 14 September by a still unknown gunman using a shotgun!

Craig Walley's relatively recent Murder at Mount Hermon: The Unsolved Killing of Headmaster Elliott Speer has resurrected interest in the mystery.

•  Original wrappers. Fine. (17126)

This was long most commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but recently, on the basis of new scholarship, authorship has been ascribed to Richard Jackson, a London barrister and colonial agent with whom Franklin collaborated in other publications. Franklin and his son, William, certainly supplied many of the materials that formed the basis of the book, which was published during Franklin's first mission to England.

Provenance:  Large signature of “Jo. Kirkbride” dated “Septr 30th 1759" on front free endpaper.

Manuscript additions: Under this ownership signature, in a later, much smaller hand, are five lines of speculation as to the work's authorship; a date is corrected on p. 263. Between leaves B3 and B4, a leaf is bound in containing, on its two sides, a handwritten “List of Governors of Pennsylvania — continued”; this, with one addition to the printed list on p. 262, takes the chronology through John W. Geary, inaugurated in 1867.

•  Sabin 25512 (noting that the editor of the second edition (Philadelphia, 1812) “had no doubt as to [Franklin's] authorship” and supplied his name); Sparks, Franklin, III, 109 (affirming that the volume “was prepared under [Franklin's] direction, and doubtless from copious materials furnished by him”); ESTC T117618.   Recent quarter calf, old style, with raised bands accented with gilt beading on each band, a gilt center device in each spine compartment, and a green leather title label. Boards covered with a stone pattern marbled paper. Title-page with two old ink blots; text lightly and uniformly age-toned. Inscriptions/additions as noted.  (25085)

Published at a critical period in America's commercial history, this work presents the then prevailing international law on such matters as shipwreck, salvage, abandonment, blockages, embargoes, delivery, demurrage, and neutrality, to mention just a few topics.

Click the images for enlargements.

Provenance:  Released as a duplicate from the Library of Congress, with the requisite and expected stamps on the title-page and rear free endpaper.

Rare. We only trace one holding beyond the Library of Congress.

•  NSTC 2J3897.   20th-century library binding; quarter red cloth shelfback over black paper boards, paper shelf label on front. Original (?) light-blue wrapper bound in, back wrapper lacking. Moderate foxing throughout. Paper flaw affecting but not costing some letters on p. 123. 19th-century library markings noted above. A very good copy.  (24454)

Provenance: Front pastedown with bookplate “De la bibliotheque de F. Freudenreich.”

•  ESTC T48434; Alston, III, 308; Goldsmiths’-Kress 11089; Sabin 32702. Contemporary speckled calf, neatly rebacked preserving original gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels, spines with gilt-stamped thistle decorations; edges and corners rubbed, sides showing small scrapes and discolorations. Residue on pastedowns from sometime removal of bookplates. Pages age-toned, with occasional small spots, and offsetting from binding to in margins of first and last few leaves. All edges speckled.

•  NSTC 2K6435, Imprint 1. Removed from a nonce volume. A few light brown spots.

285 copies were printed; this is no. 180. The publication was dedicated to collector (“and careful reader”) George Brinley, Esq.

•  Sabin 39642.   Recent black moiré cloth, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label. Several pages (including title-page) with faint shadows of institutional rubber-stamps, mostly effaced. Many signatures unopened; two index leaves with tears in upper margins from clumsy opening. Pagination shifts between text and index.  (23906)

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for an enlargement.

Garret D. Wall was a lawyer in, and later a Senator from, New Jersey.

•  Written in a clear hand. Fold along horizontal middle of document. Light stain and residue of mounting into an album. Lacks integral address leaf. Old price and dealer code (Sessler’s) in pencil in lower margin.