CHAPTAL, [Jean-Antoine-Claude, Comte de Chanteloup] (1756-1832). L'Art de faire, gouverner, et perfectionner les vins. Par le citoyen Chaptal, ministre.... Edition originale, soule avouee par l'Auteur.

FIRST edition, FIRST issue.

Paris: Delalain fils, Libraire, quai des Augustins, no. 29; de l'imprimerie de marchant; An X - 1801. 8vo., half-title, title page, 194 pages, table of contents leaf, new endpapers. Sympathetically rebound in antique style with half-leather and marbled boards and pastedowns. Red leather spine label, gilt titles. Deckled fore-edge.

$2195.00

EARLY AUTOMOBILIANA

GRANT, Ethel Watts-Mumford (b.1878) & GLAENZER, Richard Butler (1876-1937). The auto guest book: being the maxims of Punbad the Railer, ga raja of the Pun-job, vice-roysterer of Notsopoor / rendered into the vernacular and highly decorated by Ethel Watts-Mumford Grant & Richard Butler Glaenzer. San Francisco and New York : Paul Elder and Company; 1906. 8vo., 20 x 18 cm. Burlap covered boards with red and blue printed paper label on front cover. Original loose red ribbon and bow vertically banding the front board. Decorated and printed endpapers. 65 illustrated leaves, unpaginated. FIRST edition. [LC Call Number: Microfilm 88/3046 (G). Call number of original: GV1023.G7]

Fine condition. Front upper tip burlap slightly abraded. Red ribbon worn and soiled, bow flattened.  $395.00

A fine piece of very early automobiliana, this is a log for travel, a 'blank book', if you will. It is loaded with humorous aphorisms at the top of each page. The balance of the page has blank space for information relating to time, place and companions for one's trips. A sample of the sayings: 'Take care of the pennies, the garage will take care of the dollars.'  'Where law ends speed really begins.'  'To speed is human; to be caught is fine!'   There are lots of references to horses and chauffeurs. And many of the lines are best read aloud: 'So near and yet chauffeur.' We have seen several copies of this book for sale thru the years but none with the original red banding ribbon and bow.

De las Casas, Bartolomé (1474-1566). Regionum indicarum per Hispanos olim devastatarum accuratissima descriptio, insertis figuras aeneis ad vivum fabrefactis. Authore --- episcopo hispano. Editio nova priori longe correctior. Heidelberg: Guilielmi Valteri acad. Typogr. A.S.; 1664. Small 4to. Full leather. Decorative gilt border on front and rear boards. Black leather labels with gilt title and date on spine, red leather label with gilt title and border on front board. Marbeled pastedowns and first free fly.  iv, title leaf, half-title leaf, dedicatory leaf, duplicate dedicatory leaf, 112 pp., vi. 16 engraved plates throughout the text.

Rebound retaining the original leather boards, tips worn. The title page, lacking top and bottom margins, has been laid onto a replacement leaf. Outer margin of second fly leaf cut short, pencilled ownership inscription, inked date, and a written inscription which has been covered, alas, with typing white-out. One plate and its text verso supplied in skilled hand-drawn facsimile. Some water-staining to upper corner of text pages. Two old worm holes in lower tip. Pages age-toned. Despite defects, a nice copy of an important book.

A rare text in any of the early printings, this one located at University of Pennsylvania and the Royal Library of Denmark.    

After years of witnessing Indian suffering and slavery, Bartolomé de las Casas, the first ordained priest in the New World, wrote, sometime around 1550, his indictment against European exploitation, describing the violence and injustice to which native Americans were subjected by the conquistadores. In so doing, he provided history with an account that is not only detailed but is also a horrific and terrifying tale of the beginnings of the conquest and the subjugation of an entire people. In his work he hoped to move the Spanish crown with a picture of the treatment of the Indians at a time when it still seemed possible to reverse the on-rushing tide of events. He also wished to depict the courage of the clergy in protecting the rights of the oppressed.

De las Casas wrote that Hispaniola was "perhaps the most densely populated place in the world", "a beehive of people," who "of all the infinite universe of humanity, ...are the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity." Driven by "insatiable greed and ambition," and written "from my own knowledge of the acts I witnessed" the Spanish fell upon them "like ravening wild beasts, ... killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples" with "the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree" that the population is barely 200 persons. "It was a general rule among Spaniards to be cruel," he added: "not just cruel, but extraordinarily cruel so that harsh and bitter treatment would prevent Indians from daring to think of themselves as human beings".... "As they saw themselves each day perishing by the cruel and inhuman treatment of the Spaniards, crushed to the earth by the horses, cut in pieces by swords, eaten and torn by dogs, many buried alive and suffering all kinds of exquisite tortures," ...[they] "decided to abandon themselves to their unhappy fate with no further struggles, placing themselves in the hands of their enemies that they might do with them as they liked."

The leading chronicler of Spanish barbarity in the New World, las Casas wrote near end of his life: "I believe that because of these impious, criminal and ignominious deeds perpetrated so unjustly, tyrannically and barbarously, God will vent upon Spain His wrath and His fury, for nearly all of Spain has shared in the bloody wealth usurped at the cost of so much ruin and slaughter." His book was used extensively by the Dutch during their struggle for independence from Spain, being published in both Holland and England as a rallying point against, as one subtitle of the book put it, "the Bloudy and Popish nation of the Spaniards."

In 1545 de las Casas became the first bishop of Chiapas (yes, the same area in conflict in southern Mexico today!) Click HERE for a short biography of Bartolomé de las Casas.

PARIS   1807   GUIDEBOOK

VILLIERS, P. Manuel du voyageur a Paris, ou Paris ancien et moderne, contenant la description historique et geographique de cette capitale, de ses monumens, palais, edifices publics, jardins, spectacles, etc., de tout ce qui peut intreser les etrangers, suivie de la liste des banquiers. Nouvelle edition revue, corrigee, et considerablement augmentee; par P. Villiers, ancien capitaine de Dragons, auteur du Manuel du voyageur aux environs de Paris, etc. Prix: 2 francs, broche.

Paris: Chez Delaunay, Libraire, Palais-Royal, Galeries de Bois, no. 243, cote du jardin; 1807.

12mo. (ii), half-title, ad for two other guides, title page, legal deposit notice, ii Foreward, 308 pages, vii 'Notice des livres anglais et italiens', 36 pp. Delaunay catalogue of books for sale, (ii).

Marbeled boards, red speckled page edges.