Discover <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/americana?Book%20Type=First%2520Edition" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first editions</a>, <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/americana?Book%20Subject=Maps%2520and%2520Atlases" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">maps and atlases</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/americana?Book%20Subject=Manuscripts%252C%2520Letters%252C%2520Documents%252C%2520Ephemera" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">letters, documents, and manuscripts</a> on <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/americana/american-history" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">American history</a> and <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/americana/american-literature" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">American Literature</a>. Find works on presidents, the founding fathers, <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/americana/politics-&amp;-law" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">politics and law</a>, government, the American Revolution and Civil War.

American History

American Literature

Politics & Law

Maps & Atlases

Prints & Color Plates

Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera

Americana Books

John Steinbeck

<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">First edition</a>, first printing of the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning novel that made <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Steinbeck&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Steinbeck</a> a household name.<ul><li>John Steinbeck (American).</li><li>New York:&nbsp;The Viking Press,&nbsp;(1939).</li><li>620 pages.</li><li>Original tan buckram binding with brown titles and line art, in original unclipped ($2.75) color pictorial dust jacket illustrated by Elmer Hader, yellow topstain, endpapers with illustration of the Battle Hymn of the Republic in yellow and orange.</li></ul> "They was on'y one thing to do – ever – an' we done it." Grapes Of Wrath has been generations of students' introduction to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck's extensive use of symbolism and Biblical motifs also makes it an excellent exercise in literary criticism for both high schoolers and hardcore academics, all pulled together with exceptionally lyrical prose. This first edition, with its hyperbolic but prescient dust jacket editorial copy ("Perhaps Grapes Of Wrath is the greatest modern American novel... the greatest single creative work this country has ever produced"), captures the tipping point of Steinbeck's career.

Grapes Of Wrath First Edition

Sis Cunningham

Nearly contiguous first-edition run of the first 96 issues of Sis Cunningham's essential document of the 1960s folk movement, including <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Bob+Dylan&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Bob Dylan</a>'s first appearance in print, as well as the first appearance of his "Blowin' in the Wind."<ul><li>Includes issues: 1-64, 66-72, 74-85, 87-90, 92-93, 95-96; 91 issues, plus separate index to the first 37 issues.</li><li>Edited by Sis Cunningham (American).</li><li>(New York): (Broadside), (1962-1968).</li><li>Staple bound.</li></ul> "In following the example of their 17th-century predecessors, Cunningham [...] adopted perhaps the oldest surefire method available: a simple songsheet available on street corners. It was a sudden and direct way of getting a song from the writer to any amount of willing singers. A song which appeared in the afternoon might, somewhere, become a rousing anthem on that very same evening." — John Kelly With the possible exception of the field efforts of Alan Lomax, arguably no one did more to preserve American folk music than Sis Cunningham and her rag-tag zine Broadside. Issued in its first decade on a mimeograph "discarded by the American Labor Party" (Cohen 11) out of Cunningham's NYC apartment, Broadside ran for more than 25 years, focusing less on the more anthropological folk covered by competitors like Sing Out! and more on the increasingly countercultural and topical folk arising out of the Village. She later described the vivid scene: "For years Broadside operated on a shoestring. The people who helped us financially were the Seegers, Pete and Toshi. They contributed thirty-five dollars weekly to cover the cost of paper, envelopes, cans of mimeograph ink, and, in the very beginning, postage [...] Our office was the small front room of the low-income project apartment in which we lived [...] This room was also where we ate our meals; we cleared the dirty dishes off the table and went to work cutting stencils on a manual Underwood typewriter [...] When the time came, we set up the mimeo machine, a hand-cranked one [...] [a] friend coming back from Cuba said [... it] was exactly the same model as the one Castro had in the Sierra Maestra" (275). Broadside would most significantly introduce Bob Dylan to the larger folk community, publishing him in their first issue ("Talking John Birch") — the singer's first appearance in print anywhere. Perhaps most importantly, it printed his "Blowin' in the Wind" in their sixth issue, predating not only the song's release on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan the following year, but even the song's recording (in July of 1962). Dylan would go on to appear more than two dozen times over the magazine's first decade. Other contributors across the run include Phil Ochs, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Martin Luther King, Theodore Bikel, Malvina Reynolds, Vanessa Redgrave, and Richard Farina. Printings for these early issues were small (usually around 300), and distribution spotty. Early issues are scarce, and substantive sets rare. A nearly complete run of the most important years of this important music publication.

Broadside | Music Publication First Edition Collection

William Gordon

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America: including an account of the late war; and of the thirteen colonies from their origin to that period.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 4 volumes.</li><li>William Gordon (American).</li><li>London:&nbsp;Printed for the Author,&nbsp;1788.</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>[26],504;[8],584;[8],499;[6],445,[35] pages.</li><li>9 folding maps.</li><li>Modern morocco backed period marbled paper covered boards.</li></ul> "First full-scale history of this war by an American; to its preparation Jefferson contributed some aid" (Howes). "Gordon is deservedly reckoned as the most impartial and reliable of the numerous historians of the American Revolution" (Sabin). Gordon was a dissenting minister in England, who like many of his class sympathized with the contention of the Thirteen Colonies. Going to America during the disturbances and becoming pastor of the church at Jamaica Plain, now a district of Boston, he was throughout the Revolution a spectator close at hand of many important events, and the associate of many of the chief patriots. The maps illustrate the eastern United States, Boston, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Vermont, the Carolinas and part of Georgia, Charlestown with Sir Peter Parker's attack on Fort Moultrie, part of Virginia, and "York Town and Gloucester Point, as besieged by the allied army."

The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America | First Edition

Martin Luther King, Jr.

An undocumented <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first printing</a> of The Riverside Church Speech by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Martin%20Luther%20King%20Jr&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Martin Luther King Jr</a>.<ul><li>Martin Luther King Jr. (American).</li><li>Later titled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.</li><li>n.p.:&nbsp;n.p,&nbsp;[1967].</li><li>8 pages.</li><li>Printed rectos only.</li><li>Top stapled self-wrappers.</li></ul> Previously unrecorded first printing of one of King's most important speeches: his anti-war address at The Riverside Church, delivered exactly one year to the day before his assassination. "If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood." King's Riverside Church Speech (later titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence," but here untitled) was the civil rights leader's first sustained and major public statement regarding the Vietnam War. Before a crowd of more than 3000, King called for not only an end to the war, but explicitly linked the anti-war movement to the larger movements for civil rights and economic justice: "Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem." This edition is unknown and unrecorded. It is not mentioned in the major King bibliographies. The introductory paragraph ("The following is the exclusive and authorized publication of the address [...] sponsored by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam") suggests it was likely printed either by that group or King's camp. Such a printing could have been issued for members not in attendance, for press distribution at or immediately following the event, or simply to secure copyright. (The text also ends with a copyright notice by King, dated 1967.) This version differs in a number of significant ways from final published versions that appeared later. Some of these differences are accounted for by this printing's "slightly condensed" version. Others, however, clearly predate King's later revisions and finalizations which, along with the lack of title on this edition, all clearly mark the text as an early version, contemporaneous or nearly so with the event itself — and almost certainly preceding the earliest (also very rare) reprints undertaken by a number of California groups (where Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam were based, and all under the title "Beyond Vietnam") in the subsequent months. Indeed, the ditto'd presentation strongly suggests a smaller, more immediate circulation. The speech was widely criticized at the time. In the following days, more than 150 newspapers around the country condemned King, and in the aftermath of the address President Johnson dis-invited King from the White House, a rift in their relationship from which they never recovered. Among Black leaders the reception was also decidedly mixed, with many believing King's focus on the war distracted from more pressing concerns. As journalist Tavis Smiley, who produced a documentary on the speech, explained: "it was the most controversial speech he ever gave. It was the speech he labored over the most [and] got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever seen or done." Nevertheless, its reputation has only grown in the ensuing years. James Bevel considered it King's greatest speech, and King's intersectional understanding has been increasingly recognized as prescient. A rare and revealing document from one of King's most enduring public addresses.

The Riverside Church Speech: "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence"

John Marshall

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first American edition</a> of The Life of George Washington, by <a href="sothebys.com/en/search?query=John%20Marshall&amp;tab=objects" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">John Marshall</a>.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 6 volumes.</li><li>John Marshall (American).</li><li>The Life Of George Washington, Commander In Chief Of The American Forces [...] [with] Maps And Subscribers' Names.</li><li>Philadelphia:&nbsp;C.P. Wayne,&nbsp;1804-1807.&nbsp;</li><li>Octavos, plus a quarto atlas.</li><li>Volumes 1-5 are bound in full tree calf, spines of volumes 1-2 have maroon and black labels with gilt lettering and ornamentation, spines of volumes 3-5 have faded maroon labels with gilt lettering and ornamentation.</li><li>Atlas volume is quarter bound in brown leather with corners tipped and marbled paper boards.</li></ul> Contents: Volume I:<ul><li>xxii, 488, 45 pages.</li><li>Published in 1804.</li><li>Contains a frontis portrait of George Washington.</li></ul> Volume II:<ul><li>viii, 560, 72 pages.</li><li>Published in 1804.</li></ul> Volume III:<ul><li>viii, 580, 28 pages.</li><li>Published in 1804.</li></ul> Volume IV:<ul><li>viii, 626, [2], 16 pages.</li><li>Published in 1805.</li></ul> Volume V:<ul><li>vii, [1] 779, [1], 36 pages.</li><li>Published in 1807.</li></ul> Volume VI:<ul><li>"The Life of George Washington: Maps and Subscribers' Names"</li><li>[2], 10 engraved folding maps (8 double-page), 22 pages).</li><li>Published in 1807.</li></ul>

The Life of George Washington, Commander in Chief of the American Forces First American Edition

Joel Chandler Harris

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a>, first issue of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Uncle%20Remus%3A%20His%20Songs%20and%20Sayings&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings</a> by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Joel%20Chandler%20Harris&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Joel Chandler Harris</a>.<ul><li>Joel Chandler Harris (American).</li><li>New York:&nbsp;D. Appleton,&nbsp;1881. </li><li>231, [1], [8] pages.&nbsp;</li><li>Illustrated by Frederick Church and James Moser. Publisher's catalogue at rear</li><li>With "presumptive" misspelled on p. 9, bottom line, and without ads for this title in rear.</li><li>Original green cloth stamped in gold and black, housed in custom quarter green goatskin clamshell box.</li></ul> First edition of the first extensive printed record of the tales of Brer Rabbit and other oral traditions kept by enslaved African Americans before emancipation. "If any collection evokes the hushed-up paradoxes of African American folklore, it is Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories." – Gates &amp; Tatar Georgia-born white journalist Harris sought to document the cultural history of African Americans in his Uncle Remus project, and with his success "a vibrant storytelling culture for adults began its long migration from campfires and slave cabins into the nursery" (Gates &amp; Tatar). Harris painted the plantation life of enslaved people as idyllic, and his collection has depicted, created, and circulated racist stereotypes of African Americans. As complicated as such a legacy is, the collection also acts as a printed record of supreme importance for African-American oral traditions.

Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings First Edition

Robert Frank

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Robert%20Frank&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Robert Frank</a>'s <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?Book%20Type=Art%2520and%2520Design" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">photobook</a> The Americans.<ul><li>Robert Frank (American).</li><li>New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1959.</li><li>170 pages.</li><li>First American edition.</li><li>83 black and white photographs printed in gravure.</li><li>Plain endpapers, black cloth-covered boards, titles to spine in gold, white photo-illustrated dust-jacket printed in black, black and red collage by Alfred Leslie on the lower panel.</li></ul> The first American edition of Frank's masterpiece, after Robert Delpire's Les Américains, was published in France the previous year. The Americans follows a careful and complex sequence, with four chapters, each introduced by a photograph of the American flag. In his successful application for the Guggenheim grant that allowed him to make this work Frank wrote: 'The project I have in mind is one that will shape itself as it proceeds... The material is there; the practice will be in the photographer's hand, the vision in his mind!' Between April 1955 and June 1956 he set out on a series of trips across America. His aim was to complete a body of work that would be 'a broad, voluminous picture record of things American, past and present... A visual study of a civilisation.' For this, the defining edition, Frank stripped the texts which appeared opposite the photographs in Delpire's edition and added an introduction by Jack Kerouac, who writes, 'What a poem this is, what poems can be written about this book of pictures some day by young new writers.... Whether 'tis the milk of humankind-ness, or human-kindness, Shakespeare meant, makes no difference when you look at these pictures. Better than a show... Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world!' Like Vladimir Nabakov, Frank saw 1950s America as no American could have seen it, 'the loneliness, alienation, rootlessness, and sadness of automobile-happy mid-century America.' David Levi Strauss referred to the French edition as sociology, whereas the American edition is poetry. And as Kerouac writes 'Anybody doesn't like these pitchers don't like potry, see?' With this book, Frank galvaniZed photography for his generation and has influenced, in some way, every other generation since.

The Americans | First American Edition

Stephen Crane

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a>, first issue of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Stephen%20Crane&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Stephen Crane</a>'s <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=The%20Red%20Badge%20of%20Courage&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Red Badge of Courage</a>.<ul><li>Stephen Crane (American).</li><li>New York:&nbsp;D. Appleton and Company,&nbsp;1895.</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>Bound in the original cream cloth stamped in black, red, and gilt, in a dustjacket, housed in a red quarter morocco box.</li></ul> Crane's classic tale of fear, shame, bravery, and redemption has captivated generations of readers with its naturalistic, impressionistic literary style, groundbreaking for its time. A contemporary review stated, "At times the description is so vivid as to be almost suffocating. The reader is right down in the midst of it…. This is war from a new point of view." While ostensibly a book about the Civil War, the novel delves far more into the internal struggles of its protagonist, Henry Fleming, as opposed to graphic battle scenes, an approach which influenced many subsequent authors, and it has never gone out of print. The Red Badge of Courage initially appeared as a serialization in the Philadelphia Press in December 1894, and thence to nearly 800 newspapers and periodicals nationwide, establishing the young 24-year-old author as a fresh new cultural celebrity. Crane's original manuscript totaled 55,000 words, but in order to accommodate spatial requirements, only 18,000 words were permitted for the serial version, severely limiting the story's intended breadth and scope. For this, the first book-length printing of the novel, published in 1895, only 5,000 words were excised, but this still resulted in the removal of the entire twelfth chapter and significant sections of several others. While a 1982 version based on Crane's complete manuscript purported to be the definitive version of the book, other scholars have posited that it was Crane himself who made the edits in 1895, thus making the first edition the one closest to his final vision for the novel (Lentz, Private Fleming at Chancellorsville: The Red Badge of Courage and the Civil War, 2006).

The Red Badge of Courage First Edition

Walt Whitman

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a>, first issue of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=walt%20whitman&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Walt Whitman</a>'s Leaves of Grass.<ul><li>Walt Whitman (American).</li><li>New York, 1855.</li><li>Small folio.</li><li>xii, [13]–95 pages.&nbsp;</li><li>Engraved frontispiece portrait of Whitman by Samuel Hollyer after a photograph, printed on thick paper.</li><li>Bound in the original green cloth, boards with blind-stamped floral decorations, title and triple-fillet border gilt, spine with title and floral ornaments gilt, marble endpapers, all edges gilt, housed in a custom half morocco folding case.</li></ul> “He was and is the poet and prophet of democracy, and the intoxication of his immense affirmative, the fervor of his ‘barbaric yawp,’ are so powerful that the echo of his crude yet rhythmic song rings forever in the American air” (Grolier One Hundred). The self-published&nbsp;Leaves was at least partially personally&nbsp;type-set by the author on a small handpress in Brooklyn. The portrait of Whitman is here in superior condition, without the foxing often encountered. This copy bears the printed copyright statement on the verso of the title page and has the first version of line 2 of page 49 (“And the night is for you and me and all”) identified by Schmidgall in his article, “1855: a Stop-Press Revision.” Of the original 795 copies, only 337 were issued in this first binding with extensive gilt stamping, marbled end-sheets, and gilt edges (in the second binding only the title was gilt, and plain yellow end-sheets were used).

Leaves of Grass First Edition

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings.<ul><li>Joel Chandler Harris (American).</li><li>New York:&nbsp;D. Appleton,&nbsp;1881.</li><li>231 pages.</li><li>Illustrated by Frederick Church and James Moser.</li><li>With "presumptive" misspelled on page 9, bottom line, and without ads for this title in rear.</li><li>Bound in the original mustard cloth stamped in gold and black, in a custom slipcase.</li></ul> "The first large-scale effort to collect African American lore" (Gates &amp; Tatar) First issue of the first extensive printed record of the tales of Brer Rabbit and other oral traditions kept by enslaved African Americans before emancipation, in the scarce yellow binding. "If any collection evokes the hushed-up paradoxes of African American folklore, it is Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories." – Gates &amp; Tatar Georgia-born white journalist Harris sought to document the cultural history of African Americans in his Uncle Remus project, and with his success "a vibrant storytelling culture for adults began its long migration from campfires and slave cabins into the nursery" (Gates &amp; Tatar). Harris painted the plantation life of enslaved people as idyllic, and his collection has depicted, created, and circulated racist stereotypes of African Americans. As complicated as such a legacy is, the collection also acts as a printed record of supreme importance for African-American oral traditions. Robert Bone argues that "[t]o neglect the Brer Rabbit tales because a white man was the first to write them down is to betray the black man's folk tradition" (quoted in Gates and Tatar). In the recent publication of the Annotated African American Folktales, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar, the folklore recorded by Harris is given a full chapter and its complex history discussed. "In my house, growing up in Piedmont, West Virginia, we collected Mother Goose and Joel Chandler Harris," Gates told The New York Times, "My father used to tell Brer Rabbit stories to my brother and me all the time." African American authors continue to draw from this tradition to create art true to their own voices, from Charles Chesnutt's forays into mythic storytelling, to Ralph Ellison's ambiguous Ulysses-Brer Rabbit trickster imagery, to Toni Morrison's Tar Baby, to Jerry Pinkney's visual tours de force.

Uncle Remus: His Songs And Sayings

The Executive Reports from the Congress of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=james%20monroe&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">James Monroe</a>'s presidency.<ul><li>House of Representatives, United States.</li><li>Volume I, Complete.</li><li>Washington D.C:&nbsp;Gales &amp; Seaton,&nbsp;1823.&nbsp;</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>First edition thus.&nbsp;</li><li>11, 16, 15, 206, 4, 5, 3, [3], 8, 4, 4, 4, 3, 4, 25, 5, 24 pages.</li><li>Full brown calf, with chipped gilt-lettered spine label.</li></ul> Contains all 16 numbers appearing in Volume I of the U.S. House-ordered printing. Appears to contain all folding tables (41 in total).

Executive Reports, At The First Session Of The Eighteenth Congress Of The United States

Thomas Hariot

<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">First edition</a> of this iconic account of Virginia, the Roanoke colony, and its environs, including the landmark map of Virginia and engravings of Native American life in the 1580s.<ul><li>Thomas Hariot (English).</li><li>Illustrated by John White.</li><li>Engravings by Theodor De Bry.</li><li>Admiranda Narratio Fida Tamen, De Commodis Et Incolarum Ritibus Virginiæ.</li><li>Francoforti [Frankfurt]: Theodori De Bry [Theodor De Bry], 1590.</li><li>34, [64], [22] pages, most printed one side only.</li><li>Illustrated with engraved title page and 25 (of 28) engraved plates (two folding), and double-page map.</li><li>Mixed first and second issue.</li><li>Text in Latin.</li><li>Modern polished brown goat boards tooled in blind and gilt, light brown goatskin spine label, red-stained edges, endpapers renewed.</li></ul> "[O]ne of the most significant cartographical milestones in colonial North American history" (Philip D. Burden) The first of De Bry's series of great and small voyages, this book is particularly important for its content on the lives of the Native American populations of Virginia and North Carolina in the late 16th century as recorded by a key member of an early expedition. Thomas Hariot, an English polymath fluent in Carolina Algonquin, penned the text on a voyage to Roanoke Island in 1585-6, including direct observations of the Indigenous populations' living arrangements, farming, fishing, and traditional practices. The text is accompanied by illustrations originally made by John White, a member of the same expedition and later famous for his discovery that the colony of Roanoke had vanished — the very colony described in detail here by Hariot. Copies of De Bry's voyages are known for causing "the greatest confusion of bibliographers" and "the despair of collectors" (Church, vol 1, 317) owing to their typically mixed and/or incomplete states. The first and second issues of part one of the voyages were issued in the same year and are largely uniform with only minor differences in the position of the text. As with the vast majority of known copies, the present copy contains plates from both issues, with six plates from the first issue and six from the second (where there are issue points to distinguish them; the remaining 19 plates are identical between issues), as well as a mix of the first two text issues and the map in its second state (as usual) as identified by Burden. Though lacking some leaves, this copy retains its complete set of the Native American plates, arguably the most important and informative part of the entire De Bry series, and the stellar map of Virginia. A foundational book for collectors of Americana.

Virginia / Admiranda Narratio Fida Tamen, De Commodis Et Incolarum Ritibus Virginiæ

A collection of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> issues of The Gentleman's Magazine, encompassing the period of the <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?locale=en&amp;query=American%20Revolution&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">American Revolution</a>, 1774-1783.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 11 volumes.</li><li>Edited by Sylvanus Urban [Edward Cave] (English).</li><li>London: For D. Henry, 1774-1783 .</li><li>Octavos.</li><li>Bound variously in quarter calf bindings with marbled paper boards or in full speckled brown calf, all volumes with red leather labels bearing gilt titling.</li></ul> Contents:Vol. XLIV (1774) ([4], 628, [16] pages). Title page loosening. Lacking "Plate IX. Curiosities of Herculaneum", "View of Bolton Castle", "Plate XI. (marked X.) Curiosities of Herculaneum", and "Map of the Roads from London to Barnard Castle". Other plates present as described in Charles St. Barbe. Vol. XLV (1775) ([iv, 639, [13] pages). "A Plan of the Town and Chart of the Harbour at Boston" inserted after p. 41. Lacking "Map of the Road from London to St. David's", "Plate XII. (marked XI.) of Curiosities of Herculaneum", "Dr. Johnson's introduction to a Highland Hut", "Plate XIII. (marked XII.)", "Map of the Road from London to Norwich", "Map of the Road from London to Shrewsbury", "Map of the Road from York to Chester", "A View of Wingfield Castle", "Plate XIV. (marked XIII. Curiosities of Herculaneum," and "A Map of the Road from London to Barnstaple and Truro". "Plan of the Town of Boston" is inserted after p. 492. Other plates present as described in Charles St. Barbe. Vol. XLVI (1776) ([4], 609, [15] pages). Lacking "Dr. Johnson's Entertainment at a Highland Change or Inn" and "Map of Connecticut and Rhode Island". "Map of New York" bound in after p. 606. Other plates present as described in Charles St. Barbe. Vol. XLVII (1777) ([4], 642, [14] pages). "A Map of Philadelphia and Parts Adjacent" and "Portrait of Lazarus Coloredo" are inserted after p. 572. "A Bird, the Hoopoe" is inserted before p. 313. Lacking "Roman Inscriptions at Nismes". All other plates present as described in Charles St. Barbe. Vol. XLVIII (1778) ([4], 645, [15] pages). Lacking "View of Woolsthorp House", "View of the Cascade of Velika Gubaviza", and "The Larva of the Moth Sphinx Atropos"; all other plates present as described in Charles St. Barbe. Vol. XLIX (1779) ([4], 649, [15] pages). Front board shaken; free endpaper loose but present. "Elevation of the Back of the North Front of Somerset House" inserted after p. 392. All other plates present as described in Charles St. Barbe. Vol. L (1780) ([4], 628, [16] pages). Front board shaken. Lacking "Portrait of Joseph Highmore"; all other plates present as described in Charles St. Barbe. Vol. LI (1781) ([3], 598-600, iii-iv, 633, [15] pages). Lacking "Four Figures illustrating the doctrine of Water-spouts"; all other plates present as listed in Charles St. Barbe. Vol. LII (1782) (iv, 631, [17] pages. Lacking "Portrait of George Sandys [etc.]", "View of the Temple of the Sepulchre"; other plates present as described in Charles St. Barbe. Vol. LIII, Part 1 (1783) (iv, 543, [1] pages). Some margins narrowly trimmed resulting in minor loss at edges of pages. All plates present as described in Charles St. Barbe. Vol. LIII, Part 2 (1783) ([2], 545-1067, [27] pages. Lacking "Elevation of the Front of the Cathedral at Lisieux"; other plates present as described in Charles St. Barbe.

The Gentleman's Magazine: The American Revolutionary War Years

Frederick Douglass

A first edition copy of My Bondage and My Freedom, by Frederick Douglass.<ul><li>Frederick Douglass (American).</li><li>My Bondage and My Freedom: Part I - Life as a Slave, Part II - Life as a Freeman...with an Introduction by Dr.James M'Cune Smith.</li><li>New York and Auburn:&nbsp;Miller, Orton and Mulligan, 1855.</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>464 pages.</li><li>With frontispiece and plates.</li><li>Bound in the publisher's brown cloth, blocked in blind, spine lettered in gilt, yellow endpapers.</li></ul> Douglass published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life, in 1845 in which he described his years in captivity in Maryland and his eventual escape and involvement in the abolition movement. "Published seven years after the author escaped slavery. It is probably the best known narrative of the ante-bellum period" (Blockson). Ten years later, he heavily revised and expanded his autobiography as the present My Bondage and My Freedom. Almost three times the length of the Narrative, My Bondage provides considerably more detail about Douglass' enslavement and escape and includes events which had occurred between 1845 and 1855 as a free man. Notably, the book also includes an appendix with extracts from some of Douglass notable speeches, including both his famous "Letter to His Old Master" and "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July." The work also includes a new introduction by African American abolitionist James McCune Smith, whom Douglass described as "the single most important influence" on his life. The book was an instant bestseller, selling around 5,000 copies in two days.

My Bondage and My Freedom

First edition of Douglass' autobiography.<ul><li>Frederick Douglass (American).</li><li>Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave.</li><li>Boston:&nbsp;Anti-Slavery Office,&nbsp;1845.&nbsp;</li><li>xvi, 125 pages.&nbsp;</li><li>Bound in publisher's brown cloth with lettering in gilt and stamping in blind.&nbsp;</li></ul>

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Frank Triplett

First edition of this controversial biography of Jesse James, "giving full particulars of each and every dark and desperate deed in the career of this most noted outlaw of any time or nation."<ul><li>Frank Triplett (American).</li><li>St. Louis, Missouri:&nbsp;J.H. Chambers &amp; Co,&nbsp;1882.</li><li>xvi-416 pages.</li><li>Includes frontispiece portrait of Jesse James and 26 full-page wood engravings (plus an additional copy of plate 11).</li><li>Bound in original green pictorial cloth stamped in gilt and black with a man shooting over the world "Revenge," cream-coated endpapers.</li></ul> This biography would become a standard resource for later works on Jesse James, including the novel The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford (1983) which was turned into the 2007 film of the same name. After publication, questions arose concerning the true extent of the cooperation of Jesse James's wife and mother in providing material, a somewhat fitting twist for a biography of the criminal who fibbed liberally about his own legend. The illustrations include tableaux of various robberies, and a group of firearms labeled "Jesse James' Best Friends." This copy is a second issue, published within months of the first issue: three issues were published in 1882, all of which are scarce and desirable, especially in the original cloth and in presentable condition.

The Life, Times, and Treacherous Death of Jesse James

Stanley B. Burns | Elizabeth Burns

First editions of Burns' Sleeping Beauty and Sleeping Beauty II.<ul><li>Stanley B. Burns (American).</li><li>Elizabeth Burns (American).</li><li>Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America and Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement and the Family in Memorial Photography. American &amp; European Traditions.</li><li>Altadena, California: Twelvetree Press, 1990.</li><li>New York: Burns Archive Press,&nbsp;2002.</li><li>Folio.</li><li>Illustrated with 76 and 134 plates after photographs.</li><li>Signed in the second volume by Stanley and Elizabeth Burns.</li><li>Bound in publishers’ blue and black cloths in black dust jackets printed in silver.</li></ul>

Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America

Harriet Beecher Stowe

First edition, first issue of Beecher Stowe's seminal text, signed by her inspiration for Uncle Tom, Rev. Josiah Henson.<ul><li>Harriet Beecher Stowe (American).</li><li>Boston:&nbsp;John P. Jewett &amp; Company,&nbsp;1852.</li><li>[iii]-x, [13]-312; 322 pages.</li><li>Duodecimo. </li><li>Extra-illustrated with an autograph signature by Rev. Josiah Henson, Stowe’s inspiration for Uncle Tom, in vol. 1, on The Christian Age letterhead and dated by the recipient 1876 and with an autograph letter tipped in.</li><li>Inscribed by Stowe in vol. 2, to her publisher James Osgood.</li><li>Vol. 1 with original cloth gilt extra covers bound in.</li><li>Modern full green morocco gilt, red morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt.</li></ul> “In the emotion-charged atmosphere of mid-nineteenth-century America Uncle Tom's Cabin exploded like a bombshell. To those engaged in fighting slavery it appeared as an indictment of all the evils inherent in the system they opposed; to the pro-slavery forces it was a slanderous attack on 'the Southern way of life.' Whatever its weakness as a literary work -— structural looseness and excess of sentiment among them — the social impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin on the United States was greater than of any book before or since” (PMM). Published at the end of March 1852, 5000 copies of the first issue were published, with a second issue of an additional 5000 copies published on the first of April. By the middle of the month, both had been exhausted, with the publisher writing in the National Era: "Three paper mills are constantly at work, manufacturing the paper, and three power presses are working twenty-four hours per day, in printing it, and more than one hundred book-binders are incessantly plying their trade to bind them, and still it has been impossible, as yet, to supply the demand." By mid-October, 120,000 copies had been sold. The Stowe autograph letter, signed, inserted into this set is to her publisher James Osgood concerning an illustrated edition published by Houghton, Osgood, and Co. in 1878, reading in part: “Would it be any injury to delay the issuing of the book to the 13th of Jany — the reason is that Thursday I sail from Florida and should be out of the way of the noise of it. I am sick and tired of the fuss of the press that I want to escape it altogether. — There are three corrections that must be made in the plate proofs and I must trust you to see them done immediately ...”.

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly

J.B. Gibson Company

Rare centennial publication with an illustrated history of the New York Stock Exchange.<ul><li>Illustrated with photographs.</li><li>Title page printed in red and black.</li><li>Half title and frontispiece inlaid.</li><li>New York:&nbsp;J.B. Gibson Company,&nbsp;1893.</li><li>Unpaginated, [99] pp. 1 vol.</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>Full brown morocco over beveled boards in period style, silk doublures, a.e.g.</li></ul> Centennial publication comprising a list of officers and committee members, a 9-page list of members, an anonymous 30-page illustrated “History of the New York Stock Exchange” from its origins in 1792 (with list of past presidents), with the balance of the volume being illustrated advertisements. These include brokerage firms such as Drexel, Morgan, Spencer Trask and August Belmont, as well as banks (Manhattan Company, Chemical National Bank, Bank of America) and other companies (such as Manning's Yacht Agency). The anonymous author of the History of the New York Stock Exchange observes, "The New York Stock Exchange is indeed one of the greatest bulwarks against panics that the business community could have."

Souvenir of the New York Stock Exchange

JOHN F. KENNEDY

First edition of John F. Kennedy’s first book, Why England Slept, inscribed to newsman Arthur Krock, also includes As We Remember Joe, The Enemy Within, and The Fruitful Bough.<ul><li>John F. Kennedy (American).</li><li>Inscribed to Arthur Krock: “To Mr. Krock. Who Baptized, Christened, and was Best Man for this book — with my sincere thanks, Jack Kennedy.”</li><li>New York:&nbsp;Wilfred Funk, Inc,&nbsp;1940.</li><li>&nbsp;xx, 252 pp.</li><li>8vo.</li><li>Publisher’s rose cloth.</li><li>Sold as a set of 4 titles authored by Kennedy, including As We Remember Joe, The Enemy Within, The Fruitful Bough: A Tribute to Joseph P. Kennedy.</li></ul> Arthur Krock (1886-1974), the “Dean of Washington Newsmen,” was Washington correspondent and bureau chief for The New York Times and wrote the “In the Nation” column. He was a close friend and political ally of Joe Kennedy and his children. He advised John F. Kennedy with the revisions of his 1939 senior honors paper, "Appeasement in Munich,” in preparation for its publication the following year. It was Krock who suggested the new title, Why England Slept, a response to Churchill’s While England Slept. Krock would continue to advise the young Kennedy, who thanked him In the Preface to Profiles in Courage. Ted Kennedy wrote admiringly of Krock in his tribute volume to his father: “Mr. Krock has long been one of the most respected newsmen and columnists in Washington. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work. He met Dad [Joseph Kennedy] during the New Deal years and won his deep admiration. Mr. Krock advised President Kennedy in the writing of his first book, Why England Slept, and has been a source of valued help to my brothers and myself.” (Edward Kennedy, The Fruitful Bough: A Tribute to Joseph P. Kennedy, p. 112) Additional included titles: As We Remember Joe. Edited by John F. Kennedy. Privately Printed: Cambridge, Mass, 1945. First edition, second issue. Original burgundy cloth. Fine copy. Inscribed, “For Martha and Arthur Krock, Bob Kennedy. Christmas 1965.” Krock contributed a short reminiscence of Joe Kennedy from the 1940 Democratic National Convention, pp. 39-41. The Enemy Within. Kennedy, Robert F. Harper &amp; Brothers: New York, 1960. First edition. Publisher’s cloth. Spine faded. Inscribed, “To Arthur Krock, With the thanks and admiration of his friend, Bob Kennedy.” Krock wrote the foreword to The Enemy Within. The Fruitful Bough: A Tribute to Joseph P. Kennedy. Collected by Edward M. Kennedy. Privately Printed, 1965. Original blue cloth. Some scuffing to front cover. Inscribed, “To Arthur Krock, Who helped make The Fruitful Bough possible. With appreciation. Ted Kennedy. Sept 6 1965.” With carbon of typescript of Krock's contribution to the volume as submitted for editing.

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John Steinbeck

Sis Cunningham

William Gordon

Martin Luther King, Jr.

John Marshall

Joel Chandler Harris

Robert Frank

Stephen Crane

Walt Whitman

Joel Chandler Harris

Thomas Hariot

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass

Frank Triplett

Stanley B. Burns, Elizabeth Burns

Harriet Beecher Stowe

J.B. Gibson Company

JOHN F. KENNEDY