Books and Manuscripts

Philadelphia: John Gladding, 1846. 32mo. 144 pp. Illustrated with frontispiece and numerous other wood engravings by Dr. Alexander Anderson. Original full black cloth, stamped in blind and in gilt, lightly worn; all edges trimmed; ownership signatures in pencil on front free endpaper and front blank; scattered light foxing.

Extremely rare, we cannot locate another copy of this edition ever being offered at auction. No institutional copies found, OCLC only locates copies of the 1842 edition, with a different imprint. Not in Welch.

Alexander Anderson (1775-1870) is considered America's first illustrator and the father of American wood-engraving. He made his first foray into the art of engraving at the age of 12, and had his art first published in Arnaud Bernaud's The Looking Glass of the Mind in 1794. In 1808 his work was featured in what is considered America's first picture book, The Cries of New-York. He began his professional career as a physician at New York's Bellevue Hospital during the city's yellow fever outbreaks in the 1790s, but he soon after abandoned the profession to open the country's first children's book store in New York City, the Lilliputian Book-store, in 1797, where he sold books he personally engraved. Although the store operated for less than a month before closing, Anderson was a prolific engraver, and over time his work became very popular.

From the library of bibliophile and long-standing Grolier Club member David Allen Fraser (1911-2003).