Focus on Women
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1214107
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Pre-1800
Focus on Women includes material created by women who are household names, and others whose stories have been almost entirely forgotten. In the course of selecting and cataloging material for the sale, the truths of many women’s struggles and accomplishments—both mundane and record-making—manifested in several ways, with a core of interlocking patterns. Piecing together the untold stories required research guided by trails of breadcrumbs left by the objects themselves. We at Swann hope that our audience of scholars, collectors, and institutions will enjoy the early printed books, manuscripts, fine bindings, photographs, prints, drawings, and archives we have assembled to celebrate and highlight the contributions of women.
Isabella I, Queen of Spain (1451-1504)
Document Signed, Yo la Reyna, Granada, Spain 8 May 1501.
Folio format laid paper document in Spanish, ordering Royal Steward Sancho de Paredes to pay German de Paris and his partner Jacques 22,600 maravides, the remaining balance on a bill of 78,600 maravides for purchase of a tapestry; text in brown ink, in a Spanish secretarial hand, endorsed by Royal Secretary Gaspar de Trizio, and canceled with two V-shaped cuts in the document, indicating that the transaction was entered into the royal account books; old folds, receipt signed by the two merchants who received the payment; docketed on verso, with an old tab of stiff paper pasted to the verso along the top edge, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.
The woven tapestry that the Queen purchased was a gift for a church decorated with the Spanish throne’s royal coat of arms.
Estimate
$1,000 – $2,000
Women’s health. antonio guainerio (d. 1440)
Opus Preclarum ad Praxim Non Mediocriter Necessarium.
Lyon: Constantin Fradin in aedibus Jacobi Myt, 1525.
Quarto, title page with fine woodcut printer’s mark, gothic letter title printed in red and black, text printed in gothic type in double columns throughout, woodcut criblé initials; bound in full contemporary greenish reversed leather with remains of ties on boards, manuscript paper spine label, parchment pastedowns with contemporary signature of French physician Andreas Berangier [or perhaps Beranger] dated 1586, with additional later manuscript marginalia and underlining, 8 1/8 x 5 1/2 in.
Durling 2189.
Estimate
$2,000 – $2,600
Porzio, simone (1496-1554)
De Puella Germanica, quae Fere Biennium Vixerat sine Cibo, Potuque.
Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1551.
Quarto, A-B4, bound in modern marbled boards, contents good, 8 x 5 1/2 in.
This treatise examines the case of a ten-year-old German girl named Margaret Weiss who had reportedly been fasting, abstaining even from water, for two years. The physician Bucoldianus first published an account of Weiss’s miraculous survival in 1542. The physician Porzio takes a second look here, speculating that perhaps she lives on air alone. However, his overall conclusion is stark: she is very near to death and will need to begin eating again to survive.
BM STC Italian 537; Durling 3746. Wellcome I, 5222; Brunet IV, 830; Graesse V, 419; Hirsch/H. V, 660; Osler 3726; Adams P-1963.
Estimate
$400 – $600
D’aragona, maria (1503-1568) & girolamo ruscelli (1518-1566)
Lettura di Girolamo Ruscelli, sopra un Sonetto dell’illustriss Signor Marchese della Terza alla Divina Signora Marchesa del Vasto.
Venice: per Giovan Griffio, 1552.
First edition, quarto, woodcut printer’s device to title and verso of final leaf; illustrated with woodcut portrait of Maria d’Aragona in profile on V2 (leaf 74); bound in limp parchment, rebacked manuscript spine title, edges stained blue, (some spots to title, final signature with staining, bottom corner of leaf 16/17 soiled), 8 x 5 3/4 in.
Ruscelli’s work is an elaborate philosophical, linguistic and historical praise of feminine virtues. D’Aragona cultivated literary salons in the mid-16th century. Paolo Giovio, Pietro Aretino, and many others participated in her events. The last part of the volume is a tribute to D’Aragona and contains twenty-three sonnets by various poets in her honor.
BMC STC Italian page 593; (cf.) Axel Erdmann’s, My Gracious Silence, Women in the Mirror of 16th Century Printing, Luzerne: Gilhofer & Ranschburg, 1999, page 190.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Vico, enea (1523-1567); trans. natale conti (1520-1582)
Augustarum Imagines Aereis Formis Expressae; Vitae quoque earundem breviter enarratae.
Venice: Paolo Manuzio, 1558.
First Latin edition of Conti’s Le Imagini delle Donne Auguste, published in the previous year; quarto, illustrated with sixty-three full-paged engravings, engraved title page, and thirty-three text woodcuts of coins; each subject of the biography depicted in coin form, either on a unique complicated altar of varying designs or in a grid of twelve; with cancel engravings as described by Mortimer: plates I and II misfolded and bound in the wrong order, xviii and xix (on G3v and H4r) each with cancel slips pasted over with the correct engravings (the two were originally transposed); plate xi with blank cancel slip pasted over portrait; plates iv, xv, and xxiii without coin portraits; bound in full 17th century gilt-tooled red morocco, rubbed, generally good, aeg, over marbling; marbled endleaves; bookplate removed from inside front board with loss to marbled paper; ownership cipher with the initials F and C stamped neatly in the margin of the first preface leaf; 9 1/4 x 6 3/4 in.
This work contains short biographies of ancient Roman women who held the title Augusta, given to high-ranking women in imperial families, usually the wives, daughters, or mothers of emperors. Augustae had their own imperial regalia, and were sometimes allowed to preside over courts, and issue currency, thus portraits in coin format. Vico’s work contains entries on Julius Caesar’s mother, four wives, daughter Cornelia, sister Julia Minor, and dozens of other influential ancient Roman women.
Ahmanson-Murphy 537; Ren. 176:18; Adams V-634; BMSTC I 723; Mortimer Italian 533.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Thomagni, giovanni david (16th century)
Dell’Eccellentia de l’Huomo sopra quella de la Donna Libri Tre.
Venice: Giovanni Varisco, 1565.
First edition, octavo, A-X8, woodcut printer’s device to title, text printed in italic type, bound in later limp paper wrappers, with manuscript title to spine, red edges, very light waterstain to the outer margin of first leaves, but generally a clean copy with somewhat narrow margins, 5 1/2 x 3 3/4 in.
Thomagni’s four-way debate is an exploration of woman’s purported inferiority to man. Despite the title, Thomagni champions a pro-woman position.
Adams T-631; Alex Erdmann’s, My Gracious Silence, no. 76.
Estimate
$900 – $1,200
Garzoni, tommaso (1549-1589)
L’Hospidale de’ Pazzi Incurabili Nuovamente Formato & Posto in Luce.
Venice: appresso Gio. Battista Somascho, 1586.
Likely first edition (two were printed in the same year), quarto, †4, A-M8 (M8 blank & present), woodcut printer’s device to title; a clean copy in contemporary limp paper binding, some stains and old stamps to title, text printed in italic type, 8 x 5 3/4 in.
In this work, The Hospital of Incurable Madness, Garzoni writes about mental illness and those institutionalized with such diagnoses as they existed in the late 16th century. His aim was to bring awareness to mental health, and in the process of his report, he reveals contemporary attitudes regarding “incurable madness.” The mental illnesses of women, including hysteria, do not go unnoticed. Garzoni notes a resemblance between women’s hysteria and hypochondriasis.
Rare, not in Adams; BMC STC it. p. 291; Wellcome I, 2689; Krivatsy 2006.
Estimate
$700 – $900
Saint Cecilia (circa 200-235 CE)
Engraved Portrait Scene, Fiat Cor Meum.
[Antwerp]: Johann Sadeler, circa 1590.
First edition, folio format copper-plate engraving, one of the earliest examples of engraved music, containing the complete parts for a motet for five voices by Daniel Raymundi (1558-1634); signed at right bottom corner in the plate, engraved by Sadeler after de Vos; likely issued separately by Johann Sadeler; slightly shaved at bottom within the plate mark, good impression, some browning, 10 3/4 x 8 in.
The engraving shows St. Cecilia singing on the left, with the music in an open choir-book at the center of the composition. An angel, looking on with the saint, accompanies her on the organ. Cecilia is the patron saint of music and musicians.
Hollstein xxi 305; CPM, vol 47, p.118. Jessie Ann Owens, Composers at Work (1997), pp. 48-49, indicating that organists in this period played from scores in choirbook format.
Estimate
$900 – $1,200
Massinoni, giovanni antonio (fl. 1590)
Il Flagello delle Meretrici, et la Nobiltà Donnesca.
Venice: Appresso Giacomo Antonio Somascho, 1599.
First edition, quarto, A-D4; woodcut printer’s device to title; bound in later limp paste-paper boards, 8 x 5 3/4 in.
Massinoni’s essays exhibits another example of the classic Madonna-Whore Dichotomy. This work displays both harsh Renaissance misogyny and a laudatory list of noble female values, and “a good example of popular condemnation of prostitution.” (cf. Rudolph M. Bell’s How to Do It, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, page 181).
Rare, no copies in Worldcat; Not in Adams; BMC STC Italian, page 425.
Estimate
$1,800 – $2,400
Heywood, Thomas (d. 1641)
Gynaikeion: or, Nine Bookes of Various History Concerninge Women.
London: Printed by Adam Islip, 1624.
First edition, small folio, engraved title; amateurishly rebound in full leather, lacking first and last blanks, some staining, a few scattered signatures at beginning and end, 10 3/4 x 7 1/4 in.
Heywood was both playwright and a contemporary of Shakespeare. Here he examines real and mythic women and gives interesting insight into western culture’s perception about females and femininity. During Heywood’s lifetime two very different queens ruled England while several others were imprisoned and executed. Each of the nine books is named after a muse and takes her attributes as its inspiration to extrapolate. The fourth book, Melpomene, describes “Women incestuous, adulteresses, and such as have come by strange deaths”; Terpsichore, the fifth book, is about “Amazons, and other women famous either for valour or beautie”; Urania, the eighth book, is concerned with poetesses and witches; and the final chapter, Calliope, shows the punishments given to the “vitious” and the rewards reaped by the virtuous.
ESTC S119701; STC 13326.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Heywood, Thomas (d. 1641)
Gynaikeion: or, Nine Bookes of Various History Concerninge Women.
London: Printed by Adam Islip, 1624.
First edition, small folio, engraved title (trimmed and mounted), bound in full leather boards, rebacked, lacking first and last blanks (A1 & Rr6) and last contents leaf A6; text otherwise complete, some worming, 11 1/4 x 7 1/4 in.
ESTC S119701; STC 13326.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Sagramoso, michele (fl. circa 1627)
Elisa Favola Maritima.
Verona: Presso Angelo Tamo, 1627.
First edition, quarto, engraved architectural title; bound in contemporary limp parchment (detached from text block along inner front joint), some manuscript corrections and annotations in the text; small paper repair to A1, staining to lower corners of some leaves, occasional spotting, good type imprint, 7 3/4 x 5 1/2 in.
The work is a five-act play in verse by Verona playwright and poet Michele Sagramoso. Sagramoso was a member of the Accademia Filarmonico of Verona, the first literary academy in Italy to be principally devoted to music. The action takes place on the island of Manarre among the pearl fishers, and tells of the doomed romance of Elisa, a fisherwoman, and Micandro, a foreign fisherman, amidst a cast of fugitives, nymphs, and priests. (cf. Magnabosco’s, L’Accademia Filarmonica di Verona dalla Fondazione al Teatro, Verona, 2015, page 25.
Rare outside Italy, Worldcat records U.S. copies at Yale, Getty, Newberry, Harvard, and Chicago.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Fabry, wilhelm (1560-1634) & marie colinet (circa 1560-1640)
Lithotomia Vesicae.
Basel: Ludwig Koenig, typis Joh. Schroeteri, 1628.
First Latin edition, quarto, woodcut printer’s device to title, illustrated with twenty-one text woodcuts depicting surgical instruments; bound in contemporary limp parchment, contents browned due to poor paper quality, some staining, spotting, 7 3/4 x 6 in.
Fabry, called “the father of German surgery,” married Colinet in 1587. At the time she was already a midwife in her own right. Although her husband instructed her in surgery, he also reported that she excelled him in skill. Born in Geneva, daughter of a printer, Colinet came up with the innovative practice of using heat to dilate the cervix to help facilitate childbirth during labor. Her proficiency in surgery was repeatedly demonstrated through the many caesarian sections she performed. Colinet is also credited as the first practitioner to use a magnet to safely remove an errant piece of metal lodged in a patient’s eye. Her husband described her as “a constant source of help and happiness.”
Fabry also writes about a complex surgery Colinet performed to repair broken ribs which involved wiring the bones together and covering the incision site with oil-based herbal plasters that successfully staved off post-surgical infection. He includes accounts of her innovative work in his own publications but has often been incorrectly credited with their invention.
VD 17, 12:194446Z; Waller 2901; Zachert/Zeidler II, 522; Hirsch/Hub. II, 463; Vgl. Krivatsy 3859 (English edition).
Estimate
$2,000 – $2,600
Pona, francesco (1594-1655)
La Lucerna di Eureta Misoscolo Academico Filarmonico.
Venice: [Sarzina], 1628.
Quarto, a4, A-Z4 Aa4 (Aa4 blank & present); A-G4, fifth edition, two parts in one volume in contemporary limp paper, an unsophisticated copy with full margins and deckle edges, 8 1/2 x 6 1/4 in.
Pona's notorious and extremely popular collection of stories quickly found its way to the Catholic church's index of prohibited books. The author was a physician, writer, a member of the Accademia dei Filarmonici of Verona, and of the Incogniti of Venice. "The Lamp of the novel has in many other previous existences experienced innumerable reincarnations: as an innocent girl; a prostitute; historical characters such as Sulla, Cleopatra, and Ravaillac; animals such as a flea, a mouse, a horse, a bee, or a cricket. On four consecutive evening, the Lamp instructs its current owner and interlocutor [...] with fantastic tales inspired by Boccaccio, Aretino, Bandell, Barclay, and others. The Lucerna is a collection of novelistic narratives focusing for the most part on the dark, even pathological, sides of human ethos and behavior." (cf. Bondanella & Cicarelli's Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel, 2003, page 32.)
Estimate
$400 – $600
Monastic initiation ritual, benedictine nuns.
Ordo Admittendi Virgines ad Monasterii Ingressum.
Milan: Apud Impressores Achiep., 1641.
Large quarto, A-E4, final integral blank E4 present; title page printed in red and black within a border of typographical ornaments, with the Archbishop of Milan’s woodcut emblem above the imprint; printed in red and black throughout, with musical notation in the text; bound in full contemporary limp parchment, somewhat soiled, contents crisp, with good type impressions, 9 x 6 1/2 in.
This work covers the rituals carried out during the reception and final vows of novice nuns. It “provides detailed instructions for both the admission and the clothing rituals.” All are organized around music. “The greatest amount of chant was associated with the actual clothing ceremony for the novice, after Mass.” In these rituals, the officiating priest and abbess bless the new sister’s habit, veil, head-dress, and other garments. Eight different pieces of music are included in the clothing ceremony alone. After promising obedience to the Rule of St. Benedict, praying, being sprinkled with holy water, and then singing the responsorial Veni Creator Spiritus with the priest, the newly minted nun, “was to lie (decently, the manual noted) under a pall of black cloth (symbolizing her death to the world).” (cf. Robert L. Kendrick Celestial Sirens: Nuns and Their Music in Early Modern Milan, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, page 132 ff.)
Rare, one copy of this edition in Worldcat, other editions in 1607 & 1617 similarly rare; very rare at auction.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Le moyne, pierre (1602-1671)
The Gallery of Heroick Women.
London: Printed by R. Norton for Henry Seile, 1652.
First edition in English, translated from the original, La Galerie des Femmes Fortes, by John Paulet, Earl of Winchester (1598-1675), large paper copy; title page printed in red and black, with woodcut printer’s device, added engraved title by Karol [aka Charles] Audran (1594-1674) after Pietro da Corton (1596-1669), illustrated with twenty elegant full-paged full-length engraved portraits by Jean Mariette (1660-1742); bound in full contemporary dark brown sheepskin, ruled in gilt on spine and boards, cherubs on each corner of the panels on the boards, floral tools and a red lettering piece on the spine, (some dampstaining at the end of the text, generally a fresh copy), 15 1/2 x 10 in.
Subjects covered by Le Moyne include Jewish, so-called barbarian, Roman, and Christian women, including Judith, Artemisia, Lucretia, Portia, Joan of Arc, and Mary Stewart, among others whose portraits are not included.
Wing L-1045; ESTC R12737; rare at auction.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Philips, Katherine (1631-1664)
Poems by the Most Deservedly Admired Mrs. Katherine Philips, the Matchless Orinda.
London: Printed by J.M. for H. Herringman, 1669.
Folio, third edition, engraved portrait frontispiece, final blank present, bound in full contemporary calf (small patch at foot of front joint), some cosmetic defects, generally a fresh copy, 11 x 6 3/4 in.
Philips was one of few 17th century women known as a poet in her own lifetime. She died of smallpox at the age of thirty-two but leaves us a legacy of friendship poetry. She and her closest female friends, Anne Owen Lewis (1633-1692) and Mary Aubrey created their own personal literary circle, exchanging letters and poems, treasuring and celebrating their close bond.
Wing P-2034; ESTC R20915.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Matrimonial manuscript on paper.
D.O.M. Tractatus ad Rubricam Digest. Soluto Matrimonio, ab Excellentissimo Doctore Francisco Bonvicino Inditus.
Parma: Antonio Crotti, 1688.
Quarto, Latin manuscript on laid paper, single column throughout, in brown ink, 19-22 lines per page; 136 numbered pages; bound in full contemporary parchment over thin boards with gilt decoration (worming to spine), 8 x 6 in.
A seemingly unpublished manuscript. The Italian SBN database shows no published works listed under Francesco Bonvicino’s name, and only two small works of similar matter attributed to Antonio Crotti. The content of the present manuscript deals with several aspects of the dissolution of the marriage, including disposition of the dowry, will, inheritance, parental authority.
Estimate
$700 – $900
Gómez de la Parra, José (late 17th century)
Vida de la Venerable Madre Antonia de San Jacinto: Monja Professa de Velo Negro.
Mexico City: Herederos de la Viuda de Bernardo Calderón [Heirs of Paula de Benavides], 1689.
First edition, quarto, *6, §4, ¶4, A-P4, Q2; title page printed within a border of typographical ornaments, engraved arms of dedicatee, Juan Cavallero y Ocio, printed on second leaf; bound in full contemporary limp parchment, silk loop closures braided in colored thread and red glass bead catches (one loop broken, both beads present), remnants of a Dutch gilt embossed paper cover pasted under a later plain endleaf inside both boards, pattern No. 61 by Munck; some worming, a few signatures with foxing, generally crisp, worm damage to title neatly repaired on verso, 8 x 5 1/2 in.
Antonia de San Jacinto (d. 1682) was famous in her lifetime for her poverty, self-starvation, mortification of the flesh, and devotion to Christ. Her cult was extremely popular with the population of her hometown of Querétaro City in central Mexico, where she lived at the Santa Clara convent. Huge crowds attended the mass commemorating the first anniversary of her death. In 1686, her remains were exhumed for more prominent display in the Santa Clara church.
Paula de Benavides and her husband Bernardo Calderón began printing books and pamphlets in Mexico City in 1631; widowed with six children, she took over the business in 1641 and died in 1684. This book was printed by her heirs. During her forty-three-year career as a printer, Benavides printed at least 448 titles in Mexico City and ran an expansive book store. She created a printing and bookselling dynasty that persisted for three generations after her death. Daughters, daughters-in-law, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters continued printing using the Benavides name. (cf. Montiel Ontiveros, Ana Cecilia y Beltrán Cabrera, Luz del Carmen y (2006), “Paula de Benavides: impresora del siglo XVII. El inicio de un linaje.” Contribuciones desde Coatepec, Vol. , núm.10, pp.103-115 [Consultado: 4 de Mayo de 2021]. ISSN: 1870-0365. Disponible en : https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=28101005)
Medina, Mexico 1443; Palau 103582; Sabin 27761.
Estimate
$500 – $750
Vokins, Joan (d. 1690)
God’s Mighty Power Magnified: as Manifested and Revealed in his Faithful Handmaid Joan Vokins.
London: Printed for Thomas Northcott, 1691.
First edition, octavo, A4, a8, B4, C-I8, K2 (lacking four leaves: B3, B4, B5, & B6, i.e. pages 5-12); bound in full intact period speckled English sheepskin, unsophisticated, with later wove pastedowns and flyleaves in front and back, the binding slightly rubbed, 6 x 3 1/2 in.
Vokins was an ardent member of the Society of Friends who traveled as a transatlantic missionary of faith. She arrived in Oyster Bay, Long Island in New York early in 1680, traveling with her friends Sarah Yoklet and Lydia Wright. Her main objective was establishing Women’s Meetings in the colonies as she had done at home in Charney Bassett, England. She visited Providence, Rhode Island; Boston; East & West Jersey; Pennsylvania; Barbados; Nevis; and Antigua. While in Barbados, she led meetings with Black and white congregants, “and the power of the Lord Jesus was mightily manifested, so that my Soul was often melted therewith, even in the Meetings of the Negro’s or Blacks.” This posthumously published work is a collection of Vokins’s letters, many written during her journey. Supporting prefatory material is contributed by several other Quaker women, including Theophila Townsend (1656-1692). The Society of Friends’ strong stance on gender equality meant that Quaker women were able to see their own work in print during the 17th century, even as they were simultaneously jailed, executed, and otherwise persecuted for their beliefs.
ESTC R9069, listing seven copies in American libraries; Wing V-685; Smith’s Descriptive Catalogue of Friends’ Books II pages 714 and 844; Rare at auction.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
de La Roche-Guilhem, Anne (1644-1707 or 1710)
History of Female Favorites, Two Copies in French & German.
Including: Histoire des Favorites Contenant ce qui s’est Passé de plus Remarquable sous Plusieurs Regnes, Imprimé à Constantinople [i.e. Amsterdam: no printer, circa 1699], 12mo, title page printed in red and black, engraved added title, and ten full-paged engraved portraits of the subjects of the biographies; bound in contemporary boards, amateurishly rebound with original sponge-decorated calf panels from the boards relaid; humidity damage to contents, title page soft with some losses (repaired on verso), minor worming, 6 1/2 x 3 3/4 in. [together with] de la Roche-Guilhem’s Liebes-Aventuren und Dereselben Curieusen Intriqen unterschiedener Mattressen hoher Potentaten in Europa, Cologne: Marteau, 1718, title page printed in red and black, engraved added title, and ten full-paged portraits, four leaves with manuscript annotations, bound in later full leather, 6 x 3 1/2 in. (2)
French edition rare at auction; German edition also rare at auction and in libraries, three copies listed in Worldcat.
Subjects of the biographies include María de Padilla (1334-1361); Leonor Teles (c. 1350-c. 1405); Agnès Sorel (1422-1450); Giulia Farnese (1474-1524); Roxelana [aka Hurrem Sultan] (c. 1502-1558); Marie de Beauvilliers (1574-1667); Livia Drusilla [aka Julia Augusta] (59/58 BCE-29 CE); Fredegund (d. 597); Nanthild (c. 610-642); and Marozia (c. 890-937).
Estimate
$300 – $400
Eustache Le Noble (1643-1711)
Les Amours d’Anne d’Autriche, Epouse de Louis 13, avec le Cardinal Richelieu, le Veritable Pere de Louis 14, Aujourd’huy Roy de France.
Paris: Manuscript on Paper, circa 1700.
Quarto, seventy-nine inscribed pages, bound with four printed portrait engravings, text in a single column, eighteen lines per page in a professional italic hand, each within a thin red border; with eighteen blank leaves at the end; bound in full contemporary sponge-decorated calf, gilt-ruled boards, gilt-tooled spine, internally very fresh, 8 3/4 x 6 3/4 in.
This manuscript was made after the third printed edition of Eustache Le Noble’s work. The scribe has transcribed the complete title with printing place (Cologne) and date of imprint (1696). Anne of Austria (1601-1666) was queen consort to King Louis XIII of France and took up an opposing political position to Cardinal Richelieu (as she does in Dumas’ novel The Three Musketeers). Despite opposition she seized the reins of power as regent on behalf of their son after Louis’ death. She attracted enemies, and this work is the chief witness to them, alleging numerous sexual indiscretions, one with her enemy Richelieu, resulting in the apparent royal heir. The book was printed in Norwich and in Cologne. Ownership of a copy in France would have been quite dangerous in this period, but some person of means commissioned this fine copy.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695)
Fama, y Obras Posthumas del Fenix de Mexico, Decima Musa, Poetisa Americana.
Madrid: Manuel Ruiz de Murga, 1700.
Quarto, first edition of the third part of the poet’s works (each published separately: part one in Madrid, 1689 and part two in Seville, 1691); title page printed in red and black, engraved author portrait after Clemente Puche (1699-1728) bound after the title, in it Sor Juana is depicted at the center of an architectural border with quill and book in hand, flanked by personifications of Europe and America, with the arms of the soon-to-be-exiled Queen of Spain, Maria Anna of Neuburg and Giovanna Pignatelli d’Aragona (1666-1723), 7th Marquesa of the Valley of Oaxaca, heir to the conquistador Hernán Cortés at top and bottom; some scratches to title, contents generally crisp, disbound, inserted in the limp parchment binding of another book of the same period, a.e.g., 8 x 5 3/4 in.
The first 142 unnumbered pages in this posthumous work consist of laudatory verse and letters in praise of de la Cruz’s work and life by contemporary admirers and colleagues, male and female. This is followed by the first edition in print of de la Cruz’s Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz, in which she argues in defense of a woman’s right to study secular and religious texts.
European Americana 700/149; Medina BHA III:2013; Palau 65226; Sabin 36814; rare at auction.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Women, Literature, England, 18th Century, Seven Volumes.
Including: Charles Gildon’s (1665-1724) The Post-Boy Robb’d of his Mail, London: by B. Mills for John Sprint, 1706, contemporary boards, old rebacking, sewing compromised; Edward Ward’s (1667-1731) Nuptial Dialogues and Debates, London: Printed by H. Meere for T. Norris et alia, 1710; two volumes, mixed set; Madame du Noyer [aka Anne Marguerite Petit’s] (1663-1719) Letters from a Lady at Paris to a Lady at Avignon, London: for W. Mears and J. Browne, 1716, later half leather; A New Miscellaney of Original Poems, London: for T. Jauncy, 1720, including contributions from Mrs. Manley, engraved frontispiece portrait, contemporary binding in rough shape, artlessly rebacked; Mary de la Rivière Manley’s The Power of Love: in Seven Novels, London: Printed for C. Davis, 1741, repairs to title page, modern binding, aeg, library stamp to verso of last leaf; [and] Charles Pigott’s (d. 1794) The Female Jockey Club, London: Printed for D.I. Eaton, No. 74, Newgate-street, 1794, sixth edition, with corrections and material additions; all volumes octavo, not collated for completeness. (7)
Estimate
$300 – $500
Challe, Robert (1659-1721)
Les Illustres Françoises Histoires Veritables.
The Hague: Chez Abraham de Hondt, 1715.
Two 12mo volumes, earliest edition located is 1713, same publisher; title pages printed in red and black, bound in uniform contemporary speckled calf, spines tooled in gilt, with labels, some chips at head and tail, bindings dry; ex libris Gower Earl Gower, with his engraved armorial bookplates inside both front boards and blind-tooled emblem of the Order of the Garter on both boards; 6 1/4 x 3 1/2 in. (2)
Rare at auction, one copy of this edition listed in Worldcat.
Challe’s very popular libertine novel consists of interlocking stories of romance between sets of lovers. A framed narrative, with an assemblage of differing voices, it presents an interesting picture of French culture’s take on women in in this period. “[Les Illustres Françoises] features exceptional heroines whose passions are told in seven tender and violent stories, subtly unified by the bonds forged between heroes, narrators and listeners.” (cf. Geneviève Artigas Menant’s Robert Challe au Carrefour des Continents et des Cultures, Paris: Hermann, 2013.)
Estimate
$300 – $500
Women’s Health. Giovanni Antonio Terenzoni (1663-1746)
De Morbis Uteri.
Lucca: Typis Peregrini Frediani, 1715.
First edition, quarto, bound in full contemporary gilt-tooled parchment, the last few signatures browned due to the paper stock, light worming to last three leaves, 8 1/2 x 6 in.
Terenzoni’s work in fourteen chapters explores diseases affecting women and includes observations gleaned from his work performing forensic autopsies.
De Renzi, IV p. 475.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Huber, Marie (1695-1753)
The World Unmask’d: or, the Philosopher the Greatest Cheat.
London: Printed for A. Millar, 1736.
First edition in English, octavo, A4, B-Z8, Aa-Ff8, some spotting to contents, bound in contemporary full English calf, sprinkled and tooled in blind, rubbed, both boards detached, 8 x 5 in.
Marie Huber was born in Geneva to a Protestant family and lived in Lyon. In this first English edition of her work, Monde Fou Préferé au Monde Sage, Huber writes from the perspective of Pietism, a Lutheran movement of the Reformed branch that privileges a disciplined Christian lifestyle defined by individual piety. Rousseau read her work, refers to her in the chapter “Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard,” in Book Four of Émile, and was inspired by her.
ESTC T59678.
Estimate
$250 – $350
Valier, Agostino (1531-1606)
Della Istruzione delle Donne Maritate.
Padua: Apresso Gioseppe Comino, 1744.
Octavo, woodcut printer’s device to title, a very large copy with completely untrimmed edges, in the original provisional limp paper covers, 7 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.
This small book of advice to married women by the Bishop of Verona is very rare. Originally printed in 1577, neither that edition nor this reprint appear in the auction record.
Federici 2187.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Women, Great Britain, 18th Century, Two Titles.
Including: George Ballard's (1706-1755) Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, who have been celebrated for their writings or skill in the learned languages arts and sciences, Oxford: Printed by W. Jackson for the Author, 1752, first edition, quarto, contemporary calf boards, amateurishly rebacked, 9 3/4 x 7 1/2 in.;
[together with] William Alexander's (d. 1783) The History of Women from the Earliest Antiquity to the Present Time, London: for W. Strahan & T. Cadell, 1779, first edition, two quarto volumes, contemporary speckled calf, some damage to leather on the boards and spine, rebacked, original spines and labels relaid, 11 x 8 3/4 in. (3)
Estimate
$300 – $500
Raffald, Elizabeth (1733-1781)
The Experienced English House-keeper.
Manchester: Printed by Harrop for the Author, and sold by Fletch & Anderson; and by Eliz. Raffald, Confectioner, near the Exchange, The Book to be signed by the Author’s own Hand-writing, 1769.
First edition, signed by Raffald on the first page of chapter one; with two folding engraved plates (detached, one with corner torn away, not affecting the image), showing how to set the table for the first and second course of a formal meal; bound in full sheepskin ruled in gilt (worn, front board detached), contents stained and spotted, seven leaves formerly torn out and carefully stitched back together with thread, last leaf of calendar torn with loss of text to diagonal inner margin; a good candidate for restoration, some minor worming to inner margin, 8 1/8 x 5 in.
Raffald was able to change her station from housekeeper to published author and operator of an number of inter-connected businesses, including an employment placement agency for domestic workers, a cooking school, and a catering business. She also sold jellies, pastries, pickles, ketchup, cuts of meat, and fresh fish, in addition to imported olives, plums, citrus, dried fruit, nuts, and spices.
This work contains the first recipe for a Bride Cake (as Raffald styles it) best known in the present era as the now ubiquitous wedding cake. She may also be the innovative baker who came up with the first Eccles cake (a hand pie filled with currants). As a safeguard against printing piracy, Raffald signed every single copy of all her published books, as is the case here. Even so, recipe theft plagued her even beyond the grave; one of the chief offenders was Isabella Beeton (1836-1865).
Rare, ESTC lists nine copies in U.S. libraries; ESTC T82678.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Seward, Anna (1742-1809)
Monody on Major Andrè.
Lichfield: Printed and sold by J. Jackson for the Author, sold also by Robinson, Cadell & Evans et al., 1781.
Large quarto, signed by Seward on page 28, bound in 19th century half red morocco, sympathetically rebacked, 10 1/4 x 8 in.
Seward was distraught when Major John André was executed under charges of espionage by the Americans during the Revolutionary War. André had courted Honora Sneyd (d. 1780), Seward’s very close and beloved friend, more like a sister. He was caught up in Benedict Arnold’s traitorous exploits at West Point. Seward blames George Washington in particular, “Remorseless Washington! the day shall come of deep repentance for this barb’rous doom!” Washington sent evidence to Seward after the poem came out, affirming that he did not directly participate in the case as accused.
Sabin 79478; ESTC T41382.
Estimate
$500 – $700
Sacchini, Antonio (1730-1786)
Renaud Tragedie Lyrique.
Paris: Chez le Duc, 1783.
Ex libris Madame la Baronne de Montesquiou, with her name tooled boldly in large gilt letters on the front board; bound in full contemporary diced russia, with gilt floral tools in each corner, musically themed tooling to spine panels, aeg, very nicely preserved (some minor worming), engraved throughout, 12 3/4 x 10 in.
Sacchini dedicated his first opera for the French stage to Marie Antoinette. The baroness who owned this copy was Jeanne Marie Hocquart de Montfermeil (1743-1792), who married Anne-Pierre, Marquis de Montesquiou-Fézensac (1739-1798) in 1760 at the age of seventeen. Her portrait by Elisabeth Vigée le Brun survives. Presumably a patron of the arts, in addition to being a book collector, a symphony by composer Jean-François Tapray was dedicated to Madame la Baronne in 1781.
Estimate
$700 – $900
Califronia, Rosa, pseud. (fl. circa 1794)
Breve Difesa dei Diritti delle Donne Scritta da Rosa California Contessa Romana.
Assisi: [Si vende nella Stamperia Taglioretti al Cordusio in Milano], 1794.
First edition, octavo, A-G8, bound in contemporary decorated limp paper wrappers, 6 1/8 x 4 1/8 in.
This proto-feminist work represents a milestone in the Early Modern Italian conversation on gender. Califronia refutes the scornful polemic treatises on “female nature” written in her day. She argues that human rights should apply to women as well, since they possess mental capacities equal to men. She also maintains that education should be provided equally to both women and men, since women in their intellectual abilities are as reasonable and capable as men.
This work reflects a certain conservative spirit but reiterates the refusal to reduce the characteristics of women to their physical and biological conformation (a tendency shared by some French Ideologists), and the injustice of morally judging women based on their condition.
Rare.
Estimate
$2,000 – $2,600
Stanhope, Eugenia (d. 1783)
The Deportment of a Married Life.
London: Printed for Mr. Hodges & Sold by C. Mason, 1798.
Second edition, a reissue of the 1790 with a new title page and first signature, published anonymously, bound in contemporary marbled calf, original red spine label, front joint cracked, ex libris Walter Strickland, with his armorial bookplate, 8 1/4 x 5 in.
Although one may expect Stanhope to have antiquated views on marriage and a woman’s role, in her own life she bore two children out of wedlock and married only four years after the second was born. Her husband kept her a secret from his family, and only upon his death did Eugenia’s father-in-law, 4th Early of Chesterfield learn of her existence, and that of his two grandsons. He duly provided for the grandchildren in his will but left Eugenia flat. She decided to provide for herself by selling her deceased husband’s unpublished letters of advice to his sons. Their content was considered immoral at the time but made Eugenia financially independent. One wonders whether that first foray into publishing inspired her to take up her own pen.
ESTC T123797; rare at auction.
Estimate
$400 – $600
19th Century
Moïse, Penina (1797-1880)
Fancy’s Sketch Book.
Charleston, South Carolina: Published & Printed by J.S. Burges, 1833.
First edition, 12mo, title page in facsimile; family association copy, with early Moïse family ownership inscriptions on dedication leaf and rear endpapers, including C.F. Moïse, likely Cecelia Frances Moïse (1855-1947), the author’s great-niece, [the granddaughter of the poet’s younger brother Abraham (1799-1869), through his son Charles Henry Moise (1830-1896)]; and Cecelia’s niece, Dorita Moïse Kohn (1900-1992); bound in full contemporary gilt tree calf, rebacked, with original spine laid down; aeg, contemporary marbled endleaves; some foxing, a few early manuscript notes; 6 x 4 in.
Moïse’s is the first book of poetry by an American Jewish author, and the first book of any kind by an American Jewish woman. Some poems take on historical or patriotic themes, such as “Lines on the Loss of the Ship Boston,” “To Persecuted Foreigners,” and “To the Memory of Mary, the Mother of Washington.” She also includes “On the Death of My Preceptor, Isaac Harby, Esq.,” a tribute to the Reform Judaism pioneer from Charleston who died in 1828.
Harby and Abraham Moïse, the poet’s brother, worked closely together in the Reform movement. Penina Moïse wrote more than 200 hymns for the Union Hymnal (1842), the first Reform liturgy used in the U.S. “[Moïse’s hymns] reflect the aspirations of a generation of Jews who were born in the United States after the American Revolution and were inspired to revitalize their faith in the spirit of the Second Great Awakening.”
Although Moïse never married, the family provenance is directly through her brother Abraham, and his granddaughter Cecelia undoubtedly knew her great-aunt Penina, as part of this tightly knit South Carolina family. (cf. Max Stern “Penina Moïse: American Poet and Hymnwriter.” The Hymn; Boston vol. 67, Iss. 3 (Summer 2016): pp. 13-17; [and] Shira Wolosky. “The First Reform Liturgy: Penina Moise’s Hymns and the Discourses of American Identity.” Studies in American Jewish Literature (1981-), vol. 33, no. 1, 2014, pp. 130–146. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/studamerjewilite.33.1.0130.)
Singerman 0556; rare at auction.
Estimate
$2,500 – $3,500
The Lady’s Magazine.
London: Printed for G. Robinson, January-December, 1809 and supplement. [and] London: Printed for G. & S. Robinson, January-December 1813 and supplement.
Two octavo volumes, each illustrated throughout, general engraved titles for each year, twenty-four hand-colored costume plates, each of the issues with engraved frontispieces, and folding engraved patterns for embroidered borders, nice copies with some occasional foxing, bound in contemporary half leather bindings with marbled paper boards, the 1813 volume with a board supplied from another book, 8 1/4 x 5 in.
A resurgence in the study of women’s lives has brought better focus on The Lady’s Magazine, published in England between 1770 and 1818. Bringing together, national and international news, original fiction, music, practical household tips, embroidery patterns, clothing plates, and more, these popular periodicals were prized by their audience. In this period, and for the gender, the reader-contributor model produced thousands of pseudonymous pieces by writers who had few outlets for their work. For more, enjoy exploring at this link: https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/ladys-magazine/
Estimate
$250 – $350
Sand, George (1804-1876)
Pauline, Signed & Inscribed Copy.
Paris: Magen et Comon, 1841.
Octavo, from a set of Sand’s complete works, signed on half-title, “à mon ami / Harrisse / G Sand / Nohant 8 juillet / 68” to Henri Harrisse, with his signature on verso of endleaf; bound in contemporary half green morocco with marbled paper boards, 8 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.
Harrisse was an author in her own right and wrote on the history of the Americas.
Estimate
$300 – $400
D’Héricourt, Jenny (1809-1875)
A Woman’s Philosophy of Woman; or Woman Affranchised. An Answer to Michelet, Proudhon, Girardi, Legouvé, Comte, and Other Modern Innovators.
New York: Carleton, 1864.
First edition in English, octavo, xiv, [17]-317 pages, 6 pages of publisher’s ads bound after the text; bound in brown publisher’s cloth with an allover honeycomb pattern, stamped in blind, gilt-lettered spine (sunned), some light foxing to contents, 7 1/4 x 5 in.
D’Héricourt was a physician-midwife and feminist activist. She took misogyny head on, writing directly to writers who published their denigrating assessments of women. In the second section of this work, d’Héricourt is concerned with the following topics: the modern communist’s take on women, objections to the emancipation of women, nature and functions of woman, love: its function in humanity, and marriage, ending with a summary of proposed reforms, and an appeal to women. “How will [woman] become the equal of man in civil dignity? When she shall hold a place on the jury and by the side of all civil functionaries; shall be a member of boards of trade and mercantile associations; and shall be a witness in all cases in which the testimony of man is required. […] Why ought every field of occupation to be accessible to woman? Because woman is a free being, whose vocation no one has a right to contest or to restrict.”
Estimate
$300 – $500
Cooper, Susan Fenimore (1813-1894)
Autograph Letter Signed, 24 January 1885.
Single laid bifolium inscribed over two and a half pages to William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) regarding some reading material that Bryant sent, including a description of something Cooper calls “the Red Jacket ceremonies,” likely a transcript of Red Jacket’s (c. 1758-1830) oration to the Senate delivered in 1805 and reprinted in The World’s Famous Orations, edited by Bryant; neatly written, signed in full, some adhesions from an old mount on blank verso, 6 x 4 in.
Cooper states that her father, James Fenimore Cooper, “always had in his library works connected with the Red Man, and these always had a great attraction for me.” She notes, “As I grew older […] a feeling much stronger succeeded, grief and shame at our national disgrace, and lack of justice, and wisdom in dealing with the wild race whose place we have taken.”
Cooper was an accomplished artist, published naturalist, writer, and illustrator. In the present letter, she writes the following. “I have several times attempted to publish historical sketches of the People of the Long-House, having taken great pains to make these sketches accurate by consulting the best authorities, but no publisher would print them. They were rejected without being read. ‘No one cares to read a book about Indians’ was the answer I received on a dozen different occasions.”
Thoreau praises Cooper’s 1850 work, Rural Hours, in his journal. Modern scholars have suggested that some very memorable passages from Walden were likely inspired, suggested, or perhaps borrowed directly from Cooper’s earlier work. (cf. Johnson, Rochelle, and Daniel Patterson, eds. Susan Fenimore Cooper: New Essays on Rural Hours and Other Works. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001.)
Estimate
$300 – $500
Aguilar, Grace (1816-1847)
The Jewish Faith: Its Spiritual Consolation, Moral Guidance, and Immortal Hope.
Philadelphia: Published at 1227 Walnut Street, 5624 – 1864.
First American edition, octavo, 446 pages; containing Leeser’s preface, in which he describes his rejection of the immortality of the soul, for which Aguilar argues in this book; bound in later half leather, artlessly repaired with a piece of cloth tape, ex library Jews’ College London, with a few rubber stamps, a good candidate for restoration, 7 1/2 x 4 1/2 in.
Aguilar descended from a Sephardic family originally living in Portugal, that fled the Inquisition in the 18th century. She was an accomplished published novelist in her own lifetime, also writing nonfiction and works regarding Judaism that were published after her short life ended at the age of thirty-one. She and Charlotte Montefiore collaborated on The Cheap Jewish Library, Dedicated to the Working Classes, beginning in 1841. The project provided “a context in which female authors corresponded and encouraged one another in publication, […] thus contributing to the beginnings of a Jewish women’s movement in England.” (cf. “Montefiore, Charlotte Simcha”; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press)
Singerman 1812; rare at auction.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Weaving, Dying, and Recipes: Two 19th Century American Imprints.
Including: J. & R. Bronson’s The Domestic Manufacturer’s Assistant, and Family Directory in the Arts of Weaving and Dyeing, Utica, NY: Printed by William Williams, 1817, first edition, octavo, 204 pages, bound in full contemporary speckled sheepskin with gilt ruling and red lettering piece on spine, rubbed, but structurally sound and well-preserved, with bookseller’s price tag, “Price One Dollar Fifty Cents,” on pre-printed label within a border pasted inside the front board, errata leaf pasted inside back board most of which is torn away, contemporary annotations to the text; text contains instructions for dozens of different weaving patterns with typographical representations of loom dressing, and dye recipes for many colors on different fabrics, including descriptions of raw materials used in the manufacture of dyes like nutgalls, madder, brazilwood, fustic, weld, turmeric, woad, indigo, annatto, cochineal, tin, aqua-fortis, blue vitriol, alder, butternut, birch, hemlock, maple, walnut, and oak bark, sumac, and peach leaves; Shaw & Shoemaker 40323; Rink 3307.
[Together with] Mrs. Putnam’s Receipt Book, Boston: Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1849, first edition, octavo, 131 pages; by Elizabeth H.L. Putnam, bound in full publisher’s brown ribbed cloth, worn, with many signs of sloppy cooking to contents; four pages of publisher’s ads dated January 1, 1849 bound at the beginning; text includes more than 200 recipes covering everything from soup to breads, seafood, and desserts, including ice cream; copious spills on the pages with molasses gingerbread and Indian pudding recipes. (2)
Estimate
$400 – $600
Stone, Lucy (1818-1893)
Carte-de-visite.
Boston: Warren’s, [1870s].
CDV on a standard mount, not creased or trimmed, some discoloration to photo background, 4 1/4 x 2 1/2 in.
Stone was one of the early female graduates of Oberlin College, finishing her bachelor’s degree there in 1847. She had a long career as an advocate of the suffragist movement, the abolition of slavery, and lived a life that exemplified female liberation. When she married a man, she kept her own name, and they split household expenses evenly. Stone was also involved in dress reform, the sometimes-controversial process by which women of this period cast off whalebone corsets and dresses that dragged on the ground, opting instead for bloomers under shorter skirts paired with tops and jackets.
Estimate
$250 – $350
Women in Michigan & Minnesota Write Home, 1837-1859.
A Small Archive of Letters from the Russell Family of Kingston, Massachusetts.
Including: two letters written by Mary Homer Russell (1822-1906) from Cannon Falls, Minnesota in 1857; one letter from Cannon Falls, MN written by Jane Russell (1819-1924); [together with] three letters written jointly from Homer and Detroit, Michigan by family friends Mary Jane Mead (1818-1849) and her husband Henry Laurens Hammond (1815-1893) in 1843 and ‘44; two early notes written by MHR while at the Wheaton Female Seminary in the late 1830s; two letters written by MHR’s husband Joseph Peckham (1816-1884) while he was in Massachusetts and courting MHR; [and] one letter written by JR’s husband Captain Charles Weatherby Gelett (1813-1895) whilst in Cannon Falls, MN; sizes vary, one Minnesota letter with Hastings-postmarked envelope dated 1859; and three other Michigan (Detroit & Homer) postmarks from 1843 & 1844; most are addressed to “Mother,” Amelia Russell; sizes vary.
The Russell family was headed by epic matriarch Amelia Drew Russell (1785-1868), mother and stepmother to nine faithful and loving children who dutifully wrote home, along with their spouses and other ADR fans throughout the mid-19th century. Although some Russell daughters and sons stayed on the east coast, two ranged widely. Jane went whaling with her husband (for which see lot 44 this auction), and also settled for a time in Cannon Falls, where she and her husband built a house now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Gelett’s letter contains details of these house plans.
In her 1859 letter, Jane says that she prefers “to sit up a little while after the rest have gone to bed & have the room all to myself. It is about all the time I have that is free from interruptions.” She’s been making butter and tending “my old batcheler,” and notes, “my house is dirty, but they say dirt is healthy.” It sounds like their house is still under construction. “I got my parlor chamber all ready to plaster overhead but no one seems to have any plaster left for me.” She closes with the sad tale of Mr. Chapman, whose wife just died, leaving a new baby behind. “I still miss dear Mrs. C. The babe is looking finely. I held him for his mother to bestow on him the first & last smile he had from her. I assisted in laying her out & in dressing her for the grave. The little one was baptized at the funeral.”
Mary Homer is a very lively storyteller. Her two letters from Minnesota contain several amusing anecdotes, including April’s Fools pranks. “When it was time to light the candle, I took the first one that came to hand and lighted it and set it on the table. It spattered and sputtered a little and then went out. Jane felt rather vexed as she was in a hurry to use it, but I knew there were plenty of good ones, so I just laid it one side, and took another. Upon examination, we found that it was made of turnip, with a bit of candle wick transferred to it. We had a hearty laugh over the joke.” At supper time, the joker was struggling with some very unyielding butter, which he could barely cut, let alone spread onto bread when, “we could not long restrain our mirth, but all joined in another hearty laugh that the rogue got caught in his own trap. Charles had cut off some pieces of yellow turnip and laid in the plate with the butter and they so nearly resembled it. He was completely taken in.”
Next, these silly people placed a full-sized “female figure” in Chapman’s bed chamber while he was out. “We were in our chamber when he came back but heard his salutation as he entered his room, ‘Hallo old woman!’ He carried on quite a conversation with her and then took her down into the sitting room for he said he could not sleep with her in the room. He said that he could get along very well if she would sit with her back to him, but he was afraid she might turn around.”
A neighbor has a tame faun who runs free. “We frequently hear the tinkling of her bell and see her running near the house. She is fond of playing with children, and sometimes lets us older folks pat and scratch her. She came to me yesterday when I was hanging out clothes, and when I put my face down to her, attempted to lap it for me.”
Mary Homer also describes a building failure that occurred during a frivolous locally-sourced theater event. “The exercises were passing off very pleasantly […] when there came a sudden crash [and we] soon found that the floor beneath us was giving away. A good deal of confusion ensued for a few minutes, but the floor sank so gradually that no one was seriously hurt. […] Those in the middle of the room were lowered farther into [the cellar] than they cared to be, but they were soon helped out and the room cleared.” The report of the collapse is followed by Mary Homer’s critique of Minnesotan construction practices of 1857, compared to those found on the east coast.
Mary Jane Mead, who died at the age of thirty-two, includes a few short remarks. She accompanied her husband to Michigan, where he organized the first Congregational Church in Detroit in 1844. Her husband recounts their trip to Homer in detail. MJM hopes to welcome Mother Russell “to our western home, for we soon wish to have one.” Noting, “I think you would be delighted with our beautiful ‘wilds’ and our ‘oak openings,’ ‘our Prairies,’ our softly gliding streams, our soft, muddy roads with scarce a stone to jar or jolt the carriage. I shall be better able to say how I like Mich. when I shall have longer resided here.” A full transcript of the letters is available upon request.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Russell, Jane (1819-1914) Archive of Letters, 1840s.
Written during a Whaling Voyage, from Hawaii, and Other Ports.
Twenty-one letters of which seventeen are written by Russell (four written while Russell was still a girl), two by her husband, Captain Charles Weatherby Gelett (1813-1895) and one written by Mary G. Smith from the ship Saratoga to Russell while onboard the Uncas; all but one letter addressed to Russell’s mother, Amelia Drew Russell (1785-1868); some with exotic postmarks from Hong Kong, Hawaii, Lahaina, and other ports; the bulk of the letters written during the voyage of Gelett’s whaling vessel, the Uncas, which was at sea between August 1846 and the spring of 1849; most are stamped “Ship” and were eventually routed through New Bedford, Massachusetts on their way to Kingston, MA; sizes generally 9 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.
For extended periods of time, Russell was left in Hawaii while her husband returned with his crew to sea in order to further add to his stores of sperm whale oil. Russell’s letters are those of a pious New England girl, but we can infer her sense of adventure intermingled with her sometimes-harping piety. One may also consider that she was writing to her mother. Russell recounts some tales of the whaling ship and describes Faial in the Azores and her inbound and outbound visits to Valparaiso, Chile. She has written up amusing character sketches for each member of the crew as well, including each person’s name, rank, job onboard and their original home places.
Some of the most interesting material stems from her grand adventures on the Hawaiian Islands, where she traveled by foot, double canoe, and horseback, was carried in a litter, and visited volcanos and missionaries. The longest journey, made with her husband and a retinue of about fifteen while he took a break from his seafaring saw them making tracks over rugged stretches of “clinkers” (fields of broken-up lava rock) and sleeping on the ground in tents, in smoke-filled native grass huts, and caves.
By November of 1848 the Uncas crew had accumulated 3,700 barrels of whale oil, and the Captain was building his seasick-prone wife a house on deck in preparation for the voyage home. Leaving Honolulu at this date, headed for Valparaiso, they hope to encounter a few more whales along the way to fill the ship completely, and to reach home by May 1849.
The California gold rush was complicating the procurement of crew in Hawaii in the fall of 1848. Russell notes that sailors were leaving in droves (or begging to be released) while others turned down large salaries for the chance to try their luck in the gold fields of California. She also mentions that measles and whooping cough were sweeping through the population of native Hawaiians with devastating effects.
After returning home, Russell and Gelett lived in Minnesota for a short time, but the captain was drawn again to the sea, without his wife on subsequent voyages. Eventually the couple retires to California. Russell lived to the age of 95 and is buried at the Nordhoff Cemetery in Ojai, California.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Anthony, Susan B. (1820-1906)
Photographic Portrait with Clipped Signature.
Silver print by Ellis signed in the print [likely William Shewell Ellis (1876-1931)], taken circa 1900; signature clipped from a cancelled check, with seven small holes punched through the first three letters of Susan, tacked to the photo; matted, 5 3/4 x 4 1/4 in.
Estimate
$1,200 – $1,800
Press Photos, Historic Women, Five Examples.
Including black-and-white press images of the following subjects in various sizes: Clara Barton (1821-1912); Florence Nightingale (1820-1910); Mother Jones (1837-1930) two images; and Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962). (5)
Estimate
$250 – $350
Montez, Lola (1821-1861)
The Arts of Beauty; or, Secrets of a Lady’s Toilet. With Hints to Gentlemen on the Art of Fascinating.
New York: Dick & Fitzgerald Publishers [W.H. Tinson, Stereotyper; E.O. Jenkins, Printer], [1858].
First American edition, 12mo, half-title present, 132 pages, twelve pages of ads; bound in full contemporary publisher’s red cloth, with blind stamped boards. gilt spine and front board titles, some surface grime to binding, in a very good to excellent state of preservation; some foxing to contents, pencil signature to half-title, 6 1/2 x 4 1/4 in.
Montez’s factual biography reads like fiction. She was born Eliza Rosanna Gilbert in County Limerick, and spent her early years between India and the U.K. She was dancing professionally at the age of sixteen. Montez had affairs with Franz Liszt, Alexander Dumas, and others. As a performer, she most likely engaged in sex work as well; in polite society she was described as a courtesan. Her power in this position reaches its apex in Munich, where she wielded great influence over King Ludwig I of Bavaria as his mistress. Between 1846 and 1848, her role in the court caused rather profound political upheaval, ultimately resulting in Ludwig’s abdication from the throne. Marriages, affairs, and controversy came and went in subsequent years as Montez traveled to Australia and the United States, performing and dancing professionally. Montez is buried in Brooklyn, where she succumbed to syphilis in January of 1861. Aspects of her story have been portrayed in many period and modern films and novels, and she may be the inspiration for Conan Doyle’s Irene Adler. At the time of her death, Lola Montez was thirty-nine years old.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Hawes Terhune, Mary Virginia [aka Marion Harland] (1830-1922)
Diary, 1846-1853, Later Carbon of Typed Transcription.
Presumably unpublished diary comprising 349 numbered pages with text typed on one side only, written by Hawes between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three, recounting her experiences, including family and personal events and feelings, in addition to mentions of her writing, with references to “my embryo work,” [page 320] and time spent writing; 8 1/2 x 11 inch sheets held in a binder, with an additional twelve-page typed transcription of a letter to her mother originally written in 1863; two small snapshots of an elderly woman; [and] nine photographs of an unidentified historic home, as found.
Hawes Terhune was a very successful novelist and writer of cook books who began writing and publishing at the age of fourteen. She wrote twenty-five novels, and the same number of non-fiction works on household management and cooking. Notable contributions include her novels Alone, and The Hidden Path, and the wildly successful Common Sense in the Household.
The present diary was written before her marriage. She describes her process in vivid detail. “I write much now– to give my mind food, every kind of labor is distasteful– it would rather brood in silence over its own fancies and griefs, but I force it into other channels.” “I must work, while the day lasts. I do not retire at night, until I am so weary that I sleep as soon as I touch the pillow, and I lay down my pen only to seek my couch.” Even as an accomplished published novelist, Hawes’s work makes her different and opens her to social criticism. “As a compliment [a friend] repeated an observation made in relation to me by an admirer and friend. ‘She is intellectual, writes finely, but her intellect will neither get her a husband, provide comforts for him, or make him happy.’ ‘I wish I could tell you his name, ‘said she; ‘you are very intimate with him.’ […] Bitter thoughts swelled in my soul this afternoon as I trod the street alone.” (See pages 261 ff.) A great writer is always great to read, and Hawes is no exception in this candidly and sharply written journal. The typist has not taken credit for their work, but Hawes’s biography does contain the tantalizing note that she taught herself how to type after breaking her wrist at the age of seventy.
Estimate
$500 – $750
Alcott, Louisa May (1832-1888)
Little Women, or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy.
Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1869.
[Together with] Little Women, Part Second, Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1869; two 16mo volumes, volume one early issue, illustrated with four wood engravings after May Alcott; with note advertising the second part present on page 341, without “Part First” on spine, Little Women part one only listed in the ten pages of advertisements after the text, available priced at $1.50; volume two first edition, without note about part one on page iv, eight pages of publisher’s ads; both volumes bound in publisher’s green cloth, oval title within Greek key border stamped in gilt on both front boards and spines; ex libris Hattie Flagg Tidd (1858-1910) of Stoneham, Massachusetts, with her signature in each volume, noting that the books were received as a birthday present, Hattie’s birthday was June 1; in 1869, she was eleven years old; bindings a bit worn, shifting somewhat, some worming to the rear pastedown of the second part; other signs of use, 6 3/4 x 4 1/4 in.
“One of the pleasantest books we have read for a long time is, Little Women, the story of four young girls, –Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. This is a thoroughly natural and charming book, fresh and full of life, and we heartily recommend it to all young people, big or little. We gave it to a little girl of twelve to read, for whose opinion we have great respect, and she pronounced it just the nicest book. ‘I could read it right through three times, and it would be nicer and funnier every time.’ And, to our certain knowledge, she read it twice in one week, and would have read it again had not the book been carried off.”– Putnam’s Magazine
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Alcott, Louisa May (1832-1888)
Little Women, or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy.
Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1870.
[Together with] Little Women, Part Second, Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1870; two 16mo volumes; volume one illustrated with four wood engravings after May Alcott; with note advertising the second part present on page 341, without “Part First” on spine, Little Women both parts listed in the ten pages of advertisements after the text, available priced at $3.00; volume two illustrated by Hammatt Billings with note concerning the publication of part one present on page iv, “Stereotyped by Regan and Leadbeater, 55 Water Street, Boston” printed on verso of title page, eight pages of publisher’s ads; with “Part Second” on the spine; both volumes bound in publisher’s terra cotta cloth, very tattered, with losses, sewing breaking apart, a well-loved set, originally presented to Agnes M. Willson as a New Year’s gift from her father in 1871, with gift inscriptions in both volumes; possibly Agnes Margaret Willson, born in New York circa 1860, who married George E. Stoddard in Walpole, Massachusetts in April of 1899; 6 1/2 x 4 1/4 in.
Used and tattered copies of Alcott’s work with contemporary inscriptions remind us of the instant popularity and enduring qualities of the tale. This small book about the struggles of mid-19th century American women has worked its way into the culture in a very personal way. Writing was survival for Alcott. Being paid to publish, especially when she was able to retain the copyright, provided her with an ongoing stream of income for herself and her family.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Woodhull, Victoria (1838-1927) & Tennessee Claflin (1844-1923)
Five Cartes-de-visite, circa 1870.
Three cards of Woodhull, two images of the same pose, one printed by Geo. Stinson & Co., in Portland, Maine, one unmarked, the third New York: G.W. Thorne; and two images of Claflin in which she is identified as “Broker” on both; some toning, other slight defects, each 4 x 2 1/2 in. (5)
In 1870, Woodhull and Claflin were the first women to open a Wall Street stock brokerage. Their father was a snake oil salesman and occasional sham attorney or physician. The two girls were exploited for profit by their father who promoted them as psychic mediums in their early years, a career they continued to cultivate in young adulthood.
The brokerage was very successful, and the profits enabled Woodhull and Claflin to publish their own eponymous weekly radical newspaper. Advocates of the Free Love movement (which pushed for women’s right to marry, divorce, and have children without social or state restrictions), their paper was also the first in the U.S. to publish Marx’s Communist Manifesto in English. Woodhull and Claflin ran for President and Vice President of the United States in the 1872 election, nominated by the Equal Rights Party. They faced stiff disapproval and opposition and were often simply ignored. Anthony Comstock jailed both sisters for publishing an obscene newspaper at the time of the 1872 election, making it impossible for them to attempt to vote or promote their feminist and suffragist causes. Both women left New York for Great Britain in 1877.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Bernhardt, Sarah (1844-1923)
Signed and Inscribed Portrait Illustration.
Paris, 1903.
Print of Bernhardt wearing a theatrical costume, seated, arms outstretched, looking up and away, her face in profile, signed and inscribed to a René Choret (?) with a short message, signature, and date (some gaps to the bottom margin repaired, corner and marginal tear repairs, toned, 11 3/4 x 7 3/4 in. [together with] two unsigned Goupil cabinet cards from Paris, one reproducing the famous Clairin portrait, the other showing her dressed as the Queen of Spain in the 1879 production of Hugo’s Ruy Blas. (3)
Estimate
$600 – $800
Cassatt, Mary (1844-1926)
Denise Holding her Child.
Drypoint, circa 1905, second state of two; printed on cream laid paper with small bunch of grapes watermark; full margins, a very good impression with significant burr in the mother’s hair; 8 1/4 x 5 7/8 in.
Breeskin 204.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Vassar College, Tintype Album circa 1865.
Harriet Griggs Barnes (1845-1918)
Miniature album containing fifty-two gem portrait tintypes, approximately seventeen identified in pencil, with a note taped inside the ffep identifying Griggs, and mentioning Vassar; Griggs and her mother are both represented and identified; the majority of the images depict women, although whether any others attended Vassar is unclear; male sitters include four images of the same young man at different ages, including two in which he wears his military uniform, his kepi has the initials “JG”; and two photos of a puppy; rouge has been added to cheeks of most sitters, some plates trimmed to ovals; a few with surface cracking, the last three album pages empty; the album in period gilt-tooled red morocco with brass clasp, aeg, spine panel detached, chipped at head and tail, some of the paper overlays holding the photos to the heavy card album pages torn, 3 1/2 x 3 in.; the tintypes 3/4 x 1 in.
Harriet (Hattie) Griggs (1845-1918) enrolled as a freshman in the inaugural Vassar College class for its first school year in 1865. She was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts to parents from the East coast. The family was living in Ohio when her younger brother was born, and then moved to Minnesota in the 1860s. She lists Faribault, Minnesota as her hometown at the time of her college enrollment and is recorded living at the same location on the census of 1870. Although she did not graduate, she did go on to marry Civil War veteran Elmer John Barker of the 5th New York cavalry in McHenry, in Illinois in 1876. She had three sons who lived to adulthood and a daughter who passed away in her first year. The details of Griggs’s life seem to indicate that her parents explored an adventurous lifestyle in the middle part of the 19th century. She eventually settled in Crown Point, New York, on the west shore of Lake Champlain. Although Griggs herself never graduated, her daughter-in-law, Harriet Provost Fisher (1886-1974) successfully completed her Vassar degree in 1907, and her granddaughter, Janet Barker (1916-1973) was in the graduating class of the college in 1937. (cf. Vassar College. Alumnae Biographical Register Issue, page 438; Poughkeepsie, N. Y., 1939.)
Estimate
$2,500 – $3,500
Weaver, Anna K. (born circa 1847)
Cast Thy [Anchor] in Heaven.
Connecticut, circa 1875.
Photogram after a cyanotype or photogenic drawing, with the words spelled out in ferns, mounted on a period board (toned, brittle, and chipped at edges and corners), with her stamp on the verso.
Weaver served as a missionary in Bogota, Colombia in the 1870s. She was inspired to create and sell these religiously themed mottoes to financially support her missionary work. Contemporary notice of her life and work was made in Vol. V of the journal, Woman’s Work for Woman, October 1875, No. 8, pages 270-271. “The mottoes are exquisitely beautiful, made of green fern leaves, and then photographed. The background is dark, and the motto stands forth as though carved in marble, each vein and thread of the tiny leaves being clearly depicted.”
Estimate
$400 – $600
Käsebier, Gertrude (1852-1934)
Woman Artist.
Circa 1910.
Platinum print with Käsebier’s signature on recto; the image measuring 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in., the mount 10 1/4 x 8 1/4 in.
Käsebier started formal arts training at the Pratt Institute in the late 19th Century and opened her successful portrait studio in 1897. She was a devoted follower of the Pictorialist style, which sought acceptance of photography as a fine art, and she became celebrated for her photographic depictions of motherhood and domestic scenes. A founding member of the Photo-Secessionist group along with photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz and Clarence White, Käsebier’s work appeared in many photographic publications and exhibitions of the period
Estimate
$3,000 – $4,500
Smith Eigenmann, Rosa (1858-1947)
Large Archive of Correspondence, 1882-1899.
Including more than 375 individual pieces, the vast majority correspondence both sent and received by Smith, including approximately sixty-five pages dating from the period before she married Charles Eigenmann, as her career and studies were getting off the ground, most letters addressed to her parents, several to an unidentified friend addressed in shorthand symbols; the balance of the material, dating from 1887 through 1899, representing transitional periods for the scientist, as she managed her own work, while coping with a travelling spouse and the appearance of five children in her life, one with a disability; the earlier period correspondence includes six letters to Smith from William George Willoughby (1825-1911) of the California Academy of Sciences, along with several receipts from the Academy for biological specimens given by Smith; a very large trove of material housed in three thick 3-ring binders.
Rosa Smith Eigenmann is considered the first woman ichthyologist in the United States. She discovered a new species of eyeless fish, the blind goby or Othonops eos, living in caves beneath the Point Loma Peninsula in San Diego, California in 1879. At that time, she was a graduate of the Point Loma Seminary and a member of the San Diego Society of Natural History. She was the first woman to enjoy full membership in the Society, and also served as its librarian and recording secretary. A meeting with Indiana University ichthyologist David Starr Jordan allowed her to tour Europe in the summer of 1880 and then begin studies in zoology at IU.
Sometime in 1882 she was forced to abandon IU without taking a degree and return to California to care for a sick family member. This is where the present collection of correspondence begins. In July of 1882 she connected with Harford at the California Academy of Sciences, who wrote to her regarding her work with the blind goby. She, Jordan, and Harford traded samples of rare fish for research during this period as recorded in the correspondence here. By June of 1883, Smith is writing from San Francisco and actively involved with the Academy of Sciences, describing her work there, “I worked at fishes in the Acad. yesterday morning. While there Mr. Harford brought in some fishes from China [that were discovered] with gold fishes. He put them alive into alcohol for my own collection.” She is looking for work at the end of July, eventually finding a teaching position at Snell Seminary in Oakland.
Four letters and one signed document sent to Smith by close friend, botanist, and landscape architect Kate Sessions (1857-1940) from 1885 are included in the lot.
After Smith’s marriage to IU ichthyologist Carl Eignemann in 1887, the couple moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they both studied fish samples collected by Louis Agassiz in South America at Harvard. With the arrival of children, Smith is forced to step back from her science career somewhat, but the letters from this period are also of great interest as we see her balancing the demands of the family while continuing her work.
1888 is well represented in this collection, while the Eingenmann’s were stationed at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. In all, Smith published twelve papers between 1880 and 1893, and co-authored an additional twenty-five with her husband. This collection offers opportunities to gain greater knowledge of her life.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Brown Chittenden, Alice (1859-1944)
Lone Mountain.
Circa 1910.
Oil on board depicting a cross on the mountain with a few shacks and a tent in the foreground, later frame, the board 14 x 10 1/2 in., 19 1/2 x 15 1/2 in. overall.
Brown Chittenden depicted Lone Mountain more than once in her career. We have traced a different oil on board and a watercolor with the same basic composition and elements. The temporary housing in the piece was originally set up to shelter survivors of the 1906 earthquake and stayed in place for years.
Brown Chittenden is considered the foundational San Francisco female painter of the 19th century. Her success in creating botanical paintings, portraits, landscapes, and pastels earned her gold and silver medals at various expositions. An active promoter of the rights of women, she considered herself a “New Woman.” This term was used by feminists [notably Sarah Grand (1854-1943)] to describe an educated, independent person who earned her own money and exercised complete autonomy, free from male domination.
Estimate
$600 – $800
Farro, Sarah E. (b. 1859)
True Love, a Story of English Domestic Life.
Chicago: Donohue & Henneberry, [1891].
Presumed first and possibly only edition, octavo, 121 pages; printed on pulpy paper, rendered somewhat brittle and delicate by the passage of time, bound in publisher’s brick red cloth, title in gilt on front board and spine, (worn, inner joints cracked, front and rear flyleaves detached), 7 1/2 x 5 in.
Farro was born in Illinois after her parents migrated north to Chicago from the South. She was recognized as a Black novelist during her lifetime. An 1892 newspaper article on True Love and its author praises her as “the first colored woman who has ever produced and published a novel.” Details in this short newspaper notice line up neatly with Chicago census data from 1880. (The Morning Democrat, Davenport, IA 17 July 1892.) Farro’s novel was one of fifty-eight books exhibited by Illinois women writers at the World’s Fair in 1893. Even so, the book is rare in libraries and non-existent in the auction record. For more, please see: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/sarah-e-farro-african-american-novel-19th-century-why-forgotten-a7057966.html
Estimate
$1,000 – $2,000
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins [aka Stetson] (1860-1935)
The Yellow Wall-Paper.
New England Magazine, Boston: New England Magazine Corp., September 1891-February 1892.
The first appearance of the story in print, occupying pages 647-656, with three illustrations by Joseph Henry Hatfield (1863-1928), bound in later boards, awkwardly attached at the inner joints (preliminaries glued tightly to inside of front board), other defects to contents include spotting, marginal tears to inner gutters of the story; waterstained at the end, some tears to other parts of the book, 9 1/4 x 6 1/4 in.
The autobiographical Yellow Wallpaper is part of the feminist canon. It appears in countless textbooks and is the Feminist Press’s bestseller. Gilman had suffered through Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell’s (1829-1914) unsuccessful “rest cure” for her depression at her husband’s behest. Scholarship by Julie Bates Dock on the work has shown that later reprints contain textual changes when compared to this first edition.
“In its twenty-five-year odyssey of rediscovery by literary critics, […] the story has picked up along the way an assortment of blemishes and distortions, from textual anomalies to skewed accounts of its publication history to misinformation about its contemporary reception.” (cf. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and the History of its Publication and Reception: a Critical Edition and Documentary Casebook, published in the Penn State series in the History of the Book, Penn State Press, 1998.)
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Cheney Lambert, Ellen Waitstill (1862-1938)
Photo & Ephemera Album, Paris during the First World War.
Paris, May 1917-December 1918.
Folio format scrapbook containing a variety of material, including: a group photo signed by all sitters of Cheney’s husband Dr. Alexander Lambert (1861-1939) and the all-male staff of the American Red Cross’s civilian relief corps; a signed photograph of Dr. Lambert in uniform dated 1917; Cheney’s signed American Red Cross Women’s War Relief Corps in France registration, with photo attached; three identity cards with photos used in-country by Cheney during the war; approximately twenty individual photographs of women on Cheney’s staff, including several showing them at work in their offices; approximately fourteen blank documents generated and used by the Women’s War Relief Corps; Cheney’s Foreign Service Certificate; two letters thanking Cheney for her service upon her departure from France in 1919 typed and signed by her superiors at the American Red Cross; approximately twenty-seven period photographs showing the destruction done to Paris by German bombs, many by Maurice-Louis Branger (1874-1950); Barrecchia’s large folding 1918 map, The Western Theatre of the European War; [together with] a typewritten account written by Cheney describing her time in Paris; a carbon of a typed account of a voyage through France after the Armistice written by one of Lambert’s male colleagues; [and] some other related ephemera; including a letter from Harriet Chalmers Bliss Ford (1876-1964) dated 1952, sent along to a descendant of Cheney and Lambert explaining the scrapbook’s contents and captions, as she was the original compiler; the album pages extremely chipped and chipping, most material described above mounted on album pages could be removed by a qualified conservator; 12 1/2 x 9 in. overall
In her typed narrative of seven pages, Cheney provides great detailed descriptions of her work, including descriptions of its offices, organizational systems (forms, ID cards, interview processes, job assignment strategy), growth (they need larger offices and were forced to move more than once), challenges (spies, young women with no skills, rich heiresses who wanted to look important), and successes (placing the right person in the right job, and serving the cause while helping women earn money in respectable pursuits). She also mentions many of those who served by name, French and Americans alike.
She writes, “I feel as if I ought to say something about deserted Paris at the time of the near approach of the Germans, when we had air raids by night and Bertha by day, and knew that if the enemy got a very few miles nearer we might all have to be evacuated at a moment’s notice. We made light of it at the time, and there was very little panic, but thousands and thousands of rich and poor departed for the Provinces, and the streets and shops were deserted, the schools closed, and only those who had business to keep them, or nowhere to go, remained behind.”
As this account is presumed unpublished, and not much has been written regarding the work of the Corps, this scrapbook should prove an important source of primary historical material.
Harriet Bliss Ford was asked to accompany her husband to France as well. The two women met on the steamer and worked closely together, with Bliss Ford as Cheney’s assistant. They lived at the Hôtel de France et Choiseul for the eighteen months of their service. Bliss Ford was graduated from Smith College in 1899, served as an editor at the Century Magazine, and on the board of trustees of her Alma Mater.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Munson, Laura Gordon (fl. circa 1864)
Flowers from my Garden. Sketched and Painted from Nature.
New York: Anson D.F. Randolph, 1864.
First edition, large quarto, illustrated with eighteen lithographic plates painted in many colors by hand; each subject accompanied by verses; introductory poem by Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791-1865); Munson’s frontispiece is a large basket of flowers that includes many of those illustrated separately, viz., crocus, pansies, forget-me-not, lily of the valley, rose campion, rose, fairy bell, day lily, thunbergia, heliotrope, cypress vine, morning glory, jessamine, verbenas, blue fringed gentian, and autumn leaves; bound in publisher’s green textured cloth, blocked in blind with gilt illustrated title, neatly rebacked, original spine replaced, coated white endleaves decorated with gilt pattern, 11 3/4 x 10 1/2 in.
Bennett page 81; McGrath page 209; Worldcat http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/63571097, listing six copies in U.S. libraries.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
The Working Women’s Relief Association.
The Women’s Journal.
Philadelphia: Printed by Ringwalt & Brown, 15 September and 15 October 1864.
Two issues: Vol. 1 Nos. 1 & 2; each eight folio-format pages, on uncut sheet, (old folds, minor dampstaining, light edge wear), each with contemporary “sample” ink stamps above the title and contemporary library acquisition note in pencil, “1864, Nov. 29, Gift of Hon. Chas. Sumner”; 12 1/4 x 9 1/2 in.
A group of women working as professional garment sewers, shop clerks, and in factories (including wartime munitions workers) organized the Working Women’s Relief Association in Philadelphia to lobby for wage protection and increase. They succeeded in obtaining direct government contracts for 1,000 to 2,000 women workers and gained a 20% pay hike. This anonymously published periodical served as the platform for the group’s female labor issues, and include very concrete actions. One article advises women to collect hard data about their workplaces to make the case for adequate compensation and fair treatment. The Relief Association’s organizing documents are also published in The Journal, along with details of pending petitions and reports of success. Opinion pieces argue for better apprenticeship programs for girls and seek “to arouse woman to action; [and] to rally with mighty strength and number around that standard of justice which is now lifted on her behalf.” Most moving are the painful stories of poverty and starvation, as working women try and fail to get respectable work that pays a living wage. Their message ultimately reached President Lincoln, who met with the group and enacted more reforms on their behalf in 1865.
Rare, no copies in Worldcat; no copies at the American Antiquarian Society; or in the auction record.
Estimate
$300 – $500
Demmer, Margaret (1865-1924)
Two Journals Recording Details of her Daughter’s and Granddaughter’s Births and Childhoods.
Belmont, Allegany County, New York, circa 1886-1911.
Two folio-format ledger books from the period, one in half red morocco with marbled paper boards, the other in blind-stamped buckram; containing birth information about both children, beginning with Demmer’s own daughter, Margaret Anderson (d. 1973), with her birth in 1886, recording the child’s height and weight for her first fifteen years, vaccinations, school details, childish drawings, social events, gifts, lists of friends, a large hair lock, flowers from MA’s wedding, swatches of clothes (perhaps made by MD), and wedding ephemera, including a few dried flowers.
The granddaughter, Lucy Emma Barnfield’s (1906-1955) album is more detailed, dedicated by MD on first leaf, “To the child whose baby days go all too quickly,” including newspaper clippings on baby care, LB’s published birth announcement, lists of gifts and givers, and extensive notes taken almost daily and quite factual at first: “Born Oct. 22nd, 1906, Monday 7:15 am, 8 lbs. undressed. We all went to see the baby, a little worried about her feet at first, but Dr. B. said they would be all right,” “Nov. 10, I changed L. first time,” “Nov. 17, Mar. not so well, Dr. says not get up yet,” “Nov. 24, Mar walked from couch to bed first time and came to table for first time,” with MD’s own personal social notes mixed in.
By February, as the baby starts to engage with her grandmother, the details become more interesting, “Lucy doesn’t sleep quite as well toward a.m. Her face is quite broken out [eczema]. She laughs out loud, reaches out her hands & knows people, began 3rd big bottle malted milk,” other important milestones are recorded in July, when LB can stand alone, walk by holding onto furniture, play peek-a-boo and pattycake; the grandmother also notes her own emotions, “I wish they would give her to me, it seems as though she must be mine!” “She does so many cunning things, I don’t know how to write them. For instance, she doesn’t care for graham crackers, the one thing she could eat. She will feed them to Roxy and she has found out she can tease him by keeping them back & I will say, give it to Roxy, & she will shake her head for no, & when we ask her if she has any teeth she shakes her head & she waves her arms and legs for everything, and waves her hand bye-bye.”
In all nearly 200 pages are meticulously filled with very detailed notes covering LB’s first five years, as well as several family photographs, LB’s early childish scrawls, followed by drawings, and some of her first letters; in addition to being an exhaustive history of this child, MD’s journal is also a document of attitudes and practices surrounding children and child-rearing in rural America at the beginning of the 20th century, sizes vary, content is extensive. (2)
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
Humphrey, Maud (1865-1940)
Pensive Young Woman.
Watercolor on oval board, the image possibly used in an advertisement for the book, Poems, by Dobson, Locker and Praed, New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1892, and illustrated by Adams; signed and dated in lower right image; in an oval mat (taped along upper edge) and ornate frame; image is 7 1/4 x 6 in. on a 10 x 8 in. board.
Maud Humphrey, mother of actor Humphrey Bogart, was known for her heartwarming illustrations for children’s books and magazines, as well as greeting cards and advertisements.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Stowers, Jessie A. (1865-1948)
Small Archive of Ephemera and Material Documenting her Nursing Career.
Including: an album compiled during Stowers’s time working as a nurse on Blackwell’s Island [now called Roosevelt Island] circa 1894 containing approximately thirty-four black-and-white images taken at the nurses’ residence, patient wards, showing patients in beds, one showing seven small babies in the same bed, group photos of nurses, an image of a classroom with a cadaver, and a photograph of the nurses on a ferry in the East River, an early photograph of the old Gouvernour Hospital with the ambulance parked outside, and many others; two pairs of Stowers’s eyeglasses; an album containing approximately eighty letters from her Gouverneur Hospital colleagues (mostly doctors) writing with donations for her retirement gift in 1921; a small group of ancestral family papers; Stowers’s signed personal copy of the Hospital Formulary of the Department of Public Charities and Correction of the City of New York, New York: Printing Bureau, New York City Asylum for the Insane, Ward’s Island, 1886, octavo, title stained, original paper wrappers (broken, chipped); a cabinet card of Stowers and her sisters in youth; two snapshots of Stowers holding a set of newborn triplets; a family wallet; a few other miscellany papers.
Stowers was born in Waddington, New York. She was an 1892 graduate of City Hospital, a nurse at Blackwell, and Superintendent of Gouveneur Hospital from 1895 until 1921. In the early photo of the original Gouverneur Hospital buildings its famous horse-drawn ambulance is standing in readiness. In 1902, Dr. Emily Dunning Barringer (1876-1961) became the first woman ambulance physician at Gouverneur Hospital, which served the lower east side of New York. Circa 1894, when Stowers was stationed on the so-called “Welfare Island” i.e., Roosevelt Island, in the East River, it housed a notorious complex of workhouses which included a large central hospital, as well as an almshouse, a smallpox hospital, and a hospital designated for patients deemed “incurable” by the system, which included those suffering from mental and physical disabilities. Investigative reporter Nellie Bly infiltrated the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell Island in 1887, and wrote Ten Days in a Madhouse, an exposé on the inhumane conditions she found there.
Estimate
$1,000 – $2,000
Sister Nivedita (1867-1911)
An Indian Study of Love and Death, Author’s Presentation Copy.
[No place: no printer], August 16, 1905.
First edition, 12mo, presentation copy from Sister Nivedita, in deluxe full morocco with message tooled in gilt inside front board, “Sophiae Wallerstein / Spiritu Sorori Sibi / in Maerore Iacenti / ut Auxilium Ferret / Soror Nivedita / Hoc Libellum / Ex Animo / Scripsit / Anno MCMV”; indicating that the book was written for the dedicatee; with full morocco doublures and flyleaves, patterned endleaves, endbands worked in silk, silk ribbon bookmarker, aeg; some sun fading, otherwise very nicely preserved; with original blue limp paper wrappers bound in; four blank endleaves with notes in French, English, and German, in different hands, ex libris Froissart with bookplate; 5 1/2 x 3 in.
Sister Nivedita was born and raised in Ireland with the name Margaret Elizabeth Noble. She first visited India in 1898, and in that year swore to uphold Brahmacharya, complete control of body and mind through asceticism, principle fundamental to a monk’s life. She studied with Swami Vivekananda, who gave her the name Nivedita, which means “Dedicated to God.” A champion of Indian Nationalism, she lived the rest of her life in India, where she founded a school for girls (her main reason for coming to the country), nursed plague patients in the 1899 epidemic, and participated in international fund and awareness raising efforts on behalf of the Indian independence movement. She died at Roy Villa in Darjeeling in 1911. At time of the publication of this catalog, the dedicatee, Sophie Wallerstein, has yet to be identified.
Rare, OCLC locates no copies.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Goldman, Emma (1869-1940)
Living My Life, Signed & Inscribed First One Volume Edition.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934.
Octavo, with yellow erratum slip between pages 226 & 227, illustrated at the end, with index, lacking the dust jacket; inscribed on ffep, “Miss Ida Maston, Toledo, March 19, ‘34 Emma Goldman”; binding rubbed, 8 3/4 x 5 3/4 in.
Estimate
$400 – $600
Sivsey, Annie (fl. circa 1869)
Compositions, Manuscript on Paper.
England,1869.
Oblong folio manuscript on wove paper, approximately 200 pages; hand-written and illustrated throughout, with watercolor title depicting a seascape with a castle on an island and intricate calligraphically penned title, featuring the author’s name, the date and the name of her school, Upton Hall; text in purple ink within a double-ruled purple border, Sivsey has mastery of a number of hands, all neatly executed, including a sloping italic, a more upright script, a decorated Old English title face; and several highly ornamented display hands; full-paged illustrations depict: botanical specimens in fruit and flower, viz, cinnamon, allspice, clove, & nutmeg; a two-hemisphere world map; four pages of precisely drawn geometric diagrams; a full-paged maps of France and Spain with provinces outlined in color; the text ends with extensive exercises in French and Italian; bound in full contemporary pebbled red morocco over boards, tooled in blind and lettered in gilt on the front board by Stephen Amer of 23 Bridge Street, Birkenhead, with faux moiré endleaves, aeg; extremities and joints rubbed, else very good, 11 x 9 1/4 in.
The Upton Hall School was founded by the FCJ Sisters ( Fidèles compagnes de Jésus) in 1849. The school set a standard of excellence from the start, emphasizing the study of languages taught by native speakers, in addition to music, dancing, drawing, geography, botany, history, writing and arithmetic. In Sivsey’s book, a large section is dedicated to astronomy.
Estimate
$800 – $1,200
