Three Score Years and Ten. Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota and Other Parts of the West
by VAN CLEVE, Charlotte Ouisconsin
[Minneapolis]: [Privately published], 1888. FIRST EDITION. Green cloth decorated and titled in black and gilt on front cover and spine, boards lightly soiled and rubbed; previous owner's signature on front paste-down. First edition of the author's work on the early days of Fort Snelling and her travels through the pioneer mid-west. Van Cleve (b. 1819) was the first white woman born in the Wisconsin territory, in the settlement of Prarie du Chien. As a child, she accompanied the troops... Read More
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Magic squares of (2n+1)2 cells. Avec sommaire: les carrés magiques impairs
by VAN DRIEL, M.-J
London: Rider & Co, 1936. FIRST EDITION. Numerous text diagrams. Publisher’s cloth, author and title in gilt on front cover and spine, original dust wrapper a bit worn around the edges and spine with small tears to the edges. First edition. For those of you who don’t know, “a square of (2n+1)2 cells containing the numbers from 1 to (2N+1)2 is called magic when the numbers in each column, in each row and in each of the two diagonals... Read More
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Sechs Vorträge über das thermodynamische Potential und seine Anwendungen auf chemische und physikalische Gleichgewichtsprobleme eingeleitet durch zwei Vorträge über nichtverdünnte Lösungen und über den Osmotischen Druck
by VAN LAAR, J.J.
Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg und sohn, 1906. FIRST EDITION. Half-morocco over marbled boards, title in gilt on spine. An excellent copy from the Mount Wilson Observatory, with a presentation bookplate to the Observatory by the Dutch astronomer Adriaan van Maanen (1884-1946), and with his signature dated 1906 on the half-title. First edition of this important work in thermodynamics and chemistry.
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Giovanni di Giscala tiranno del Tempio di Gerusalemme. Tragedia
by VARANO, Alfonso
Rome: Carlo Mordacchini, 1825. Contemporary vellum, gilt spine and red spine label; text is very clean. An excellent copy. Unknown edition of Varano’s famous tragedy of the story of John of Giscala, the tyrant of the temple of Jerusalem. OCLC locates no copies of this imprint. There is a copy of another work by Varano printed by Mordacchini in 1825 entitled Saeba, regina di Ginge, e di Taniorre. Tragedia.
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Dissertation sur l’excommunication
by VAUCHER, John
Geneva: Heirs of J.J. Paschoud, 1827. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. Original blue wrappers. Errata slip laid in. Mild foxing, otherwise in excellent condition. Only edition of this historical investigation of excommunication from the Catholic Church. Divided into four periods, it covers the birth of Christ to the reign of Constantine, the year 313 until the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, 1455 to the Reformation of 1520, and the Reformation to Calvinism. Written in a philosophical rather... Read More
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Les Taches d’Encre
by VIDI, Luce
Paris: Librairie Niclaus, 1937. FIRST EDITION. 4 photogravure plates, wood engravings throughout. Original printed wrappers. In excellent condition. First edition of this occultist inquiry on the nature of ink stains. Published amidst the popularity of the Rorschach method, this book takes the psychoanalysis aspect a step further and supposes a psychic meaning to what one sees in an inkblot. Rather than hard science, the text is couched in astrology and ancient occult wisdom, insisting that what someone sees in... Read More
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Comte de gabalis, ou entretiens sur les sciences secretes. (bound with) Les Genies assistans, et gnomes irreconciliables
by [VILLARS, L’Abbe de]
“Cologne”; the Hague: “Pierre Marteau”, 1718. (lacking final two blanks) Contemporary blind-ruled mottled calf, spine and label gilt, edges marbled blue, blue silk marker. Old armorial ex-libris bookplate. Some paper flaws and rough cuts not affecting text. Two satirical anonymous occult texts taking aim at Rosicrucianism. The first is written in the form of a dialogue between a cabalist (Comte de Gabalis) and a skeptic. The five “entretiens”, or interviews, attempt to discount the Paracelsian doctrine on elementary spirits... Read More
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Essai sur les prairies naturelles, memoire presente au concours . .
by VINCENT, Aristide
Brest: Edouard Anner, 1845. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. With half-title and 1 engraved plate. Stiff blue marbled wrappers, with some light wear to spine. From the library of Jerry Stannard, with his book-label. First and only edition of this prize-winning essay, written in response to a contest put together by the Société Véterinare de Finistère, for the improvement and creation of grasslands. Vincent, a civil engineer and mayor of the small village of Landévennec, France, gives excellent suggestions for... Read More
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Des Prisons et des prisonniers
by VINGTRINIER, Arthus Barthélemy
Versailles: Klefer, 1840. Folding engraved plate and 2 folding letterpress plates, letterpress tables in the text. Unopened in original printed blue wrappers. Slight wear to the extremities of the wrappers, otherwise excellent. First edition of this groundbreaking plan for an overhaul of the French penal system. Here Vingtrinier, a prison physician in Rouen, details his ideas for making prisons humane, hygienic, and efficacious in order to produce reformed society members and reduce criminal recidivism. His plans include apprenticeships through... Read More
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Die krankhaften Geschwuelste
by VIRCHOW, Rudolf
Berlin: August Hirschwald, 1863. FIRST EDITION. With 2 engraved frontispieces and 250 text woodcuts. Contemporary pebbled cloth, gilt on spines, faded; interior fine. From the library of Dr. L. Aschoff with his bookplate. First edition. Virchow’s pioneer work on tumours was never completed. Originally intended to contain 30 lectures, he stopped with lecture 25 on carcinoma, probably because doubts had arisen regarding his conception of the origin of epithelial tumours from reserve cells in the connective tissues. Nevertheless, it... Read More
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Cellularpathologie...
by VIRCHOW, Rudolf
Berlin: August Hirschwald, 1858. THIRD EDITION. Half-title and 144 text woodcuts. Contemporary half-cloth and marbled boards, minor wear on edges and corners; an excellent copy. PMM 307c. Third edition of Virchow's acclaimed treatise on cellular pathology. His discovery that every morbid structure consisted of cells derived from pre-existing cells revolutionized the concept that any developed tissue can be traced back only to a cell. Using improved microscopic and biochemical techniques, Virchow succeeded in reducing pathological processes to alterations and... Read More
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Dell’architettura libri dieci di M. Vitruvio Pollione tradotti e commentati dal Marchese Berabdo Galiani
by VITRUVIUS, Marco Pollione, Vitruvio; GALIANI, Berardo, ed
Livorno: Presso gli Editori, 1832. With 28 etched plates of architectural plans and elements, each with an accompanying leaf of descriptive text. Later sheep-backed boards (spine separated from book block, some sheets loose). Later edition of Galiani’s renowned vernacular recension of Vitruvius’ landmark architectural treatise. Replete with footnotes and prefatory text, this is considered the finest Italian translation. The delicate illustrations show designs for columns, theaters, temples, roofs, aqueducts, galleries, and more. Galiani (1724-1774) was an architectural... Read More
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Les nouvelles oeuvres de Monsieur de Voiture
by VOITURE, Vincent
Paris: chez Louis Bilaine au Palais, 1665. Complete as issued, with the Nouvelles lettres and the Metamorphoses. Interesting title device. French sprinkled calf, joints starting; some minor foxing and stains, a tear on page 3 affecting text. Early note on flyleaf, plus a contemporary signature of Eugène de Breza on title and a bookplate (Karl Spitzweg's The Bookworm) signed by Robert J. O'Toole. This edition of the author's works of prose is sometimes found bound with his Les Oeuvres.... Read More
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Oratio Habita in Gymnasio Patavino..
by VOLPI, Giovanni Antonio
Padua: [Cominus Press], 1737. FIRST EDITION. Woodcut devices on title and last leaf. Beautiful initials, head- and tailpiece, printer’s device on colophon. Original quarter vellum over marbled boards; wide-margined copy on heavy paper. Only copy of this finely produced publication of the Comino Press in Padua, founded by the brothers Volpi. Giovanni Antonio Volpi (1686-1766), Italian printer and classical scholar, established a press called Libreria Volpi-Cominiana (fl. 1717-1756) in conjunction with the printer Comino. For many years he was... Read More
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La Monacologia ossia descrizione metodica de frati
by [VON BORN, Ignaz Edler]
Cagliari: Efisio Firanu, 1848. Original printed wrappers. Some minor foxing, otherwise fine. A whimsical satire on monastic life, written as a Linnaean classification. First published in Latin in 1783, the text is comprised of entries for twelve holy orders, with a physical description, differences between male and female species (monks and nuns), habitat, diet, and purpose (for example, “Too fat for use, born only to eat and drink”). An epigraph written by Linnaeus about insects and adapted to the... Read More
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“Zur algebra der funktionaloperationen und theorie der normalen operatoren.” Offprint from Mathematische Annalen, Vol. 102, No. 3, pp. 370-427
by VON NEUMANN, John
Berlin: Julius Springer, 1929. Original printed wrappers. An excellent copy. First printing, the first introduction of Von Neumann’s “Algebra of functional operations and theory of normal operators,” thereafter referred to as Von Neumann algebras. This is von Neumann’s paper on the spectral theorem for normal operators, with detailed discussion of the weakly closed *-subalgebra generated by a set of operators In mathematics, a von Neumann algebra or W*-algebra is a *-algebra of bounded operators on a Hilbert space... Read More
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Vetus latium profanum tomus quintus...
by VULPIO, Joseph Rocco
Patavia: Joseph Comin, 1732. With 16 full-page engraved plates. Engraved title vignette, head- and tailpieces, and printer’s device on verso of last leaf. Recent quarter-calf and marbled boards, speckled edges; a lovely copy, extremely clean. First edition of Book five of a ten-volume series on ancient Latium, the region of Central Italy where Rome was founded. Each volume was published and sold separately. This particular volume is on the history and antiquities of Lanuvium and Ardea, two ancient cities... Read More
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Flora lapponica exhibens plantas geographice et botanice consideratas, in lapponis svecicis scilicet umensi, pitensi, lulensi, tornensi, et kemensi nec non lapponiis norvegicis scilicet norlandia et finmarkia utraque indigenas, it itineribus annorum 1800, 1802, 1807 et 1810 denuo investigatas
by WAHLENBERG, George
Berlin: In Taberna Libraria Scholae Realis, 1812. FIRST EDITION. With the large folding map of Lapland, hand-coloured in outline, l folding engraved table, and 30 engraved plates. Contemporary half-calf over marbled boards, rebacked; interior lightly browned. With a large bookplate from the Academiae Harvardianae donation fund of 1842 (received 1849 and withdrawn). First edition of the author's main work in the field of plant geography, the results of his four excursions to Lapland and northern Norway. The book includes... Read More
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The Journal of the Franklin Institute, Third Series, Volume LXIII, January - June, 1872, Nos. I - V.
by WAHL, William (ed.)
Philadelphia: Franklin Institute, 1872. FIRST EDITION. Illustrated with plates (many folding), text illustrations, drawings, graphics, photographs, and full page color illustrations. Half calf over cloth boards. First edition of this fascinating journal describing and illustrating some of the latest inventions and innovations in science and mechanics. The articles include: Baird on the absorption of gases by water; Cooke on the chemical theory of the voltaic battery; Leeds on ventilation; Owen on terrestrial magnetism; The awarding of the Rumford... Read More
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Manuscript account book of the restoration of Strawberry Hill (with) Manuscript listing material for new edition of Walpole’s letters
by WALDEGRAVE, Countess
London, 1862. Original green cloth. Original account book of 150 pages, 22 lines each, on blue lined paper. Original green cloth, somewhat soiled; the interior in excellent condition. Walpole lived at Strawberry Hill for about fifty years until his death in March, 1797. When he died, the house was entrusted to his cousin, Mrs. Anne Seymour Damer, who, in order to cope with the high expenses of the building, had been given a subsidy of about £2000 a... Read More
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A collection of all the publicke orders ordinances and declarations of both Houses of Parliament, from the ninth of March 1642. Untill December 1646. Together with serverall of his Majesties proclamations and other papers printed at Oxford …
by PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND AND WALES
London: Printed by T.W. [Thomas Warren] for Ed. [Edward] Husband, 1646. FIRST EDITION. Engraved frontispiece, woodcut headpieces. Contemporary calf, worn, especially at spine, joints somewhat tender; first blank appears to be torn out, leaf with frontispiece repaired, some browning and soiling mostly on edges. Overall a good copy from the library of the Earls of Macclesfield with their dated (1860) bookplate (motto “Sapere aude”) on the paste-down and blind embossed stamp of armorial on first three leaves. First edition.... Read More
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A system of familiar philosophy : in twelve lectures...
by WALKER, A[dam]
London: Printed for the author, 1802. SECOND EDITION. Illustrated with 49 folding copperplates. Contemporary calf, worn and rubbed; scattered browning, spotting and offsetting from plates, some waterstains. From the library of Arnold Thackray with his bookplate on the paste-down of each volume. Second edition, first published in 1799. Walker (1731-1821) was an inventor and celebrated lecturer of natural philosophy. He traveled throughout England, Scotland and Ireland lecturing on numerous scientific subjects, including all the latest developments and discoveries in... Read More
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An Inaugural Dissertation on the Perspirable Fluids of the Human Body
by WALKER, Richard L.
New York: T. & J. Swords, printers to. . . Columbia College, 1802. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. Disbound. First and only edition of this early American dissertation submitted to the trustees of Columbia College, in the state of New York, for the degree of Doctor of Physic. Walker gives an in-depth analysis of the physiology, pathology and chemical actions that produce perspiration, as well as describing various secretions and how they originate. In addition, there is a discussion on... Read More
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Darwinism. An exposition of the theory of natural selection with some of its application
by WALLACE, Alfred Russel
London: Macmillan and Co., 1890. SECOND EDITION. With half-title and 2 page publisher's advertisements. Heliotype frontispiece portrait of author, 1 hand-coloured folding map, text illustrations and diagrams. Original green cloth. Second edition of Wallace's treatise on the theory of natural selection. This is Wallace's restatement of the origin of species on the same general lines as were adopted by Darwin, but from the standpoint reached after nearly thirty years of discussion and with many new facts and the advocacy... Read More
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Mr. Wallers speech in Parliament, at a conference of both Houses in the painted chamber. 6. Iuly 1641
by WALLER, Edmunc
London: Printed by J.N. [John Norton] for Abel Roper, 1641. FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE. Woodcut device on title, woodcut initials and headpieces. Half-morocco and pebbled boards, title in gilt on spine; other than browning on the fly-leaf, interior excellent. From the Markree Library with its small book label on the paste-down. First edition, first issue, with “Eagle” spelled correctly in the imprint. Waller (1606–1687) was a poet and politician. He was incredibly wealthy and much admired in the court... Read More
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