Western Americana

Paris: Chez Gide, 1839. First edition. Contemporary quarter morocco over marbled boards, raised bands, compartments decorated in gilt, marbled endpapers. A very good or better copy, boards and spine rubbed, scattered foxing mainly marginal and to verso of plates.. xii, 591 pp. Illus. with 18 engraved plates on India paper and 34 woodcut vignettes. 4to. "The most exhaustive work on this episode [the Pastry War] with illustrations, mainly by Blanchard, who, assisting also as interpreter, had additional opportunity for gaining information. He accompanied Baudin's representative to Mexico and other places, and used his pen freely in observations on the scenery, the people, and their institutions, all of which served to add variety and interest to the narrative, the attractive style of which owes much to the revision of Dauzats," (Bancroft, Hist. Mexico, p. 204). Raines, discussing Maissin's report, concludes that "Admiral Baudin's favorable report of Texas doubtless hastened the recognition of the… Read More

Washington, D.C.: Robert Armstrong, 1853. First Edition . Hardcover. Fair. Senate Ex. Doc. 59, 32d Congress, 2nd Session. First Edition with seventy-nine plates and usual first state numbering problems: 23 Landscape plates, numbered 1-13 and 15-21 with three unnumbered plates at end; 6 Mammal plates; 5 Bird plates, with no Plate II as usual, numbered 1 and then 3-6; 21 Reptile plates with two plates marked Plate 10, Plate 12 marked Plate 11, and Plate 14 marked either Plate 18 or 13; 3 Fish plates, and 21 Plant plates with the last being Aploppus Nuttalii. 8vo, three-quarter leather by unknown binder with name S.H. Walley (presume this is U.S. Representative Samuel H. Walley from Massachusetts) stamped at bottom of spine; fair (boards loose, almost detached, and only held in place with new cords by a binder; in other words, not completely restored; joints torn; marbled paper on boards heavily rubbed and worn; edges of boards heavily worn and scraped; spine creased, scraped, and scarred; leather on… Read More

San Francisco. Thomas C. Russell. 1919. Spectacularly bound in 3/4 gilt ruled crimson crush grain morocco and linen covered boards.Gilt ruled spine compartments with gilt tooled pictorial vignettes depicting historical California characters. Ornate gilt tooled raised bands. Gilt titles. Marbled endsheets. Top edge gilded. Royal 8vo. 7.0 x 10.25". This Edition limited 250 numbered copies of which this in #208. Signed by the publisher, Thomas C. Russell to the limitation page. This issue reprinted Page for Page, and approximately Line for Line from the original Edition published by Smith, Elder and Company., London 1839, to which is added a new index. Illustrated with 10 colour lithographs and a folding map- complete as issued. This is a Presentation Copy from San Francisco tycoon William Sproule (Wells Fargo and Southern Pacific) to his son-in-law Eugene Kelly - owner of Kelly Donohue Bank of San Francisco. Sproule's gift inscription written in ink to flyleaf. A most rare issue. Short bump… Read More

New York: D. Appleton, 1854. 1st ed. . Hardcover. VG/No Jacket. 1130 pages. Travels and work connected with the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission during the years 1850, '51, '52, and '53. Gift inscription on half-title page of each book, dated July 4, 1854. Folding lithograph frontis in each volume. Folding map in volume 1. The map has a six inch diagonal tear. Map opens to about 20 inches wide by 16 tall. Dark green or black cloth-covered boards. Title and Saguaro cactus in gilt on spine of each book. Scattered illustrations through both books, including many tissue protected lithographs on Howes B201; Raines p.22; Graff 198; BTB-12. VG/No Jacket. Clean and solid. Item #: B9647.

Shane - Jack Schaefer (Rare Western 1st Edition Early Printing 1949 Hardcover w/ DJ) Lone Gunfighter Film Adaptation
**This book has a printing/binding error between pages 152-169, where pages 89-104 were duplicated and inserted at that location. In addition, pages 153-168 were never included in this copy.**
Please note that this is an early printing given the price and lack of subsequent printings; however it is NOT a first printing given the color of the hardcover and the title page does not list a year.
Copyright 1949, published by Houghton Mifflin Company (Boston). Dust jacket in protective mylar is price clipped. Jacket shows wear along the edges and hinges, as well as a black mark/streak on the rear. Blue hardcover has a heavily bumped spine tail and nick along the rear bottom-edge. There are a handful of pages (such as pg. 1-4, 5-8, 209-212, 213-end) that have not been "cut" so it appears the book has gone unread; some of the page ends in these sections have small tears. Also, there is the… Read More

12 mo. (6 x 4 inches) San Francisco: Marvin & Hitchcock, 1852. First Edition. 2 [v]-viii, 258 pages, original quarter blind tooled red roan, good condition, cloth boards, with wear to lower spine (lower left hinge on front cover split, but holding), gilt title at head of spine, publishers name in gilt at foot of spine, original cloth boards showing evidence of old moisture splash or spill, minor foxing on preliminary and last leaves; contents clean, intact and unaffected. Old library label beneath old inked inscription "Placed in Library because of California history contained in the (the last word is un-readable)" on front pastedown.

A fine unsophisticated example. The Norris catalogue refers to it as "The first text-book published in San Francisco."

An observation attributed to Cowan refers to it as "... the first educational work published in California after American rule." The last 12 pages are titled "Geography, History, and Present Condition of California."

Marvin and Hitchcock were San… Read More

Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1935. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR at front end page -" To Ethan D. Alyea, Who helped with this volume as the acknowledgements show - With thanks & regards, Harry T. Peters". With laid in one page TLS on author's stationery with New York City letterhead, dated December 23, 1935 to Mr. Alyea - "My dear Ethan, I am enclosing you herewith a copy of 'California in Stone', together with your California Volume which you so kindly lent me. I am trying to return all the material I borrowed before Christmas to make the book. You will note that your book helped me in many places in the book. My notes only show that you loaned me this one volume, however, if you find in checking over that you lent me any others, kindly call it to my attention as I want to be sure to return all I borrowed and my notes may not be complete in the confusion. I hope you will like the book and enjoy it as much as I did in making it. Sincerely yours, Harry".… Read More

Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1846. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. Title continues: "With a Description of the Countries Passed Through, Including their Geography, Geology, Resources, Present Condition, and the Different Nations Inhabiting Them." 7.5" x 4.5", 303 pp, bound in three-quarter leather and marbled boards; rebacked, with new endpapers, earlier spine laid down. The large folding map is supplied in facsimile. Light foxing to title page, stain affecting margin and a small amount of text on last ca. 20 leaves, otherwise quite clean. First edition, first issue (with page numbers 77-88, 270-271, and 302 placed in the inner margin) of one of the most important overland narratives, with considerable detail on the fur trade. Sage (1817-1893) was a self-taught newspaper printer and editor from Ohio with a strong impulse to travel and explore. Eager to learn more about the vast region beyond the Missouri frontier, in 1841 he organized a small party and headed west. His travels brought him into… Read More

[Texas] Eleazer Huntington. Map of the United States. Compiled from the latest authorities. Hartford: H.F. Sumner & Co. 1833. Hand colored engraved map. 35 x 52 cm. Very good.
OCLC shows two holdings (LOC & UT-Arlington). Rare Book Hub shows no auction or catalog listings. Map of the United States, showing the Missouri Territory with locations of Native American tribes. Also shows lands of Mexico stretching north to the 42d parallel and including present day Texas. Includes a table of distances at lower right. Relief shown by hachures. Prime meridians: Greenwich and Washington, D.C. Includes distance table. Fold-lined. Engraved by E. Huntington.

[Texas Revolution] Texas Veteran Association. Twenty-Fifth Annual Re-Union Texas Veterans. Dallas, April 20 and 21. 1898. [Dallas, Texas?]: Texas Veteran Association. 1898. Color silk ribbon in form of the Texas flag. 5.75 x 20 cm. Very good.
All of these veteran reunion ribbons are scarce. The ribbon is from the 1898 25th reunion in Dallas of Texas veterans who fought in the Texas Revolutionary war witj Mexico. The result of winning the war with Mexico Texas gained its Independence and became the Republic of Texas its own country in 1836. There were not that many veterans of the war and not that many were surviving into 1898 so that makes this a pretty rare ribbon. A great display piece.

[Portland, OR & Seattle, WA: Walter Angus MacKay, Julia Rose Eder MacKay, Cross & Dimmitt, ca. 1880-1958]. Two vols. 1st - Thick oblong 4to. 11.5 x 8.75 x 2.25 in. [128 pp (unpaginated).], on thick black paper. With 461 photographs sized 1.75 x 2.75 in. up to 4.5 x 5.5 in., including 2 CDV’s, 1 cyanotype, several albumen, and range of silver gelatin snapshots on matted and glossy paper stock, many w/ annotations either on verso, below images, or w/in the margins at lower fore-edge, or in pencil, some w/ white ink alongside the images. Contemporary flexible polished calf post-binder, punch-sewn at gutter margin in gold silk braid, RPPC of Tillamook Bay, OR by Gregg mounted on front cover (chipping & wear to front cover, wear to corners, wear & rubbing to some fore-edges, occasional chipping, minor closed tears), still VG exemplar; 2nd vol. -- Oblong 8vo. 8 x 5.75 in. [78 pp (unpaginated).], on thick tan paper stock. With 101 silver gelatin photographs mounted, sized from 1.75 x 2.75 in. up to 4 x 6… Read More

San Francisco: Taber Photo, 1880. Ephemera. Near fine. An imperial plate (8-1/2 by 12-1/2 inches) portrait of Galen Clark holding a rifle and standing in front of one of the first famous trees from the Yosemite area. Watkins took this image in 1865 or 1866, during one of his extended trips to Yosemite. It was printed by Isaiah Taber from the original negative, after Taber took over Watkins's bankrupt photo studio. The Getty owns a copy of this image and it is very similar to one of Watkins's mammoth-plate images (Naef and Hult-Lewis, Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs, no. 104). While it is generally known that Watkins regularly took his 18-by-22-inch mammoth glass-plate camera and a stereoview camera to Yosemite, the existence of imperial plate photographs suggests he took a third camera with him on his trips. Amy S. Doherty ("Carleton E. Watkins, Photographer: 1829-1916" in the Syracuse University Courier vol. 15, no. 4, 1978) proposed this idea based on an examination of a bound… Read More

The Rocky Mountains; Or, Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures in the Far West, of the Army of the United States, and Illustrated from Various Other Sources.1837, 2 volumes, First American Edition. . With a fold out original map in front of each volume. Each volume 248 pages. Volume one has 10 pages of publisher's book ads. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard. 12mo.Unique early story of exploration and mapping of the West from Green River to the Great Salt Lake and on to Walla Walla. Bonneville and his party were among the earliest to do so. Also includes Joe Walker's fur trapping story over the Sierra Nevada to CaliforniaCondition: This two volume set has been restored to its original appearance as photographed. Woven cloth and aged printed paper labels convincingly mimic the originals, making this a two volume treasure ready for the future. Both fold out maps are original, as is the total text block. Maps are complete, with archival tissue reinforcement on some edges. One small corner of one of the… Read More

Quarto in oblong format (11 by 14 1/2 inches) Oakland, California: Thompson & West [Printed by Pacific Press Printing and Publishing House], 1880. First, Original Edition. [3] iv-vi [2], [1] 12-192 pages; eighty-seven full page lithographic views, including a double page bird's-eye-view of the Wolfskill Ranch; full page colored map showing the Western States of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California dated 1878.

Good condition: stamped-embossed original cloth over boards, with title in gilt centered on the front cover; professionally re-backed, with new corners, new endpapers to match the period; title in gilt on spine. Loss to lower right margin of one view, not affecting that image, archival repair to tear in margin of another plate, not affecting that image; another view, and pages 19-22, 37-38, 129-130 provided in facsimile, and are compatible to the contents - the book is in otherwise original condition, with binding and contents intact.

The fine plates are of local businesses, residences, farms,… Read More

New York and London: Henry G. Langley; Wiley & Putnam, 1844. Hardcover. Very good. First edition, second issue, with New York and London imprints on title page. Two volumes, uniformly bound in three-quarter leather and marbled boards, housed in a custom cloth slipcase and chemise. Complete with two engraved maps (one linen-backed and folding), frontispiece and two additional plates in each volume, as well as illustrations in the text. Text and plates very clean. Wagner-Camp (108:2): "Commerce of the Prairies is regarded as one of the classic accounts of the trans-Mississippi West....Wheat calls its map, 'a cartographic landmark...an outstanding achievement.' Born in Tennessee, Josiah Gregg set out for Santa Fe in 1831 to recover his health, and afterward he became an active trader on the Santa Fe Trail for the next decade." Rittenhouse (255): "This work stands as a cornerstone of all studies on the Santa Fe Trail in the early period, describing the origin and development of the trade, Gregg's own… Read More