1870 · Cleveland, Ohio
by [CHILDREN'S CHAPBOOK]
Cleveland, Ohio: Ingham & Bragg, 1870. Good. 64mo. (4.25" x 3"). 56 pages. With a steel-engraved frontispiece of "Biddy's Family" and engraved historiated initial letters at the beginning of each of the five chapter. Original beige cloth (worn and quite soiled, gilding on spine completely faded; text evenly toned). A good, unsophisticated copy, free from markings and ugly stamps, complete with all requisite blanks, the binding sound and hinges quite perfect. SCARCE AMERICAN CHAPBOOK WHICH ENCOURAGES WONDERMENT IN THE ORDINARY WORLD.
Miss Alice, "a young lady who was a teacher in the High School," invites and encourages a young girl (Clara) to "find out something you never knew before, even about such common things as cats, pigs, and chickens. [...] Why not? If you were to spend your whole life in studying merely the animals and plants which are to be found in your own state you would not have learned all there is to be known about them."
This is perhaps a reprint of the undated New York Sunday-School Union edition of which four copies are known, among them being Smith College which bears an inscription dated "1863." Our edition is not in OCLC, and copies of any other edition -- if indeed they were actually printed -- are not forthcoming.
With an intriguing, no doubt contemporary white and gold embossed label affixed inside the back cover: "Saxony Thread Edging" with the penciled numeral "114/3" -- perhaps ingeniously repurposed by a bibliophile to help organize her/his library? In any event, the Saxony Thread Edging company has all but evaporated from record: we find only a single reference to it in the LoC Chronicling America website, namely an advertisement in the Aug. 6, 1855 issue of the Daily Gate City newspaper from Keokuk, Iowa: "Saxony Thread Edging - in a great variety - received by D. Foster, April 23, 1855. (Inventory #: 3208)
Miss Alice, "a young lady who was a teacher in the High School," invites and encourages a young girl (Clara) to "find out something you never knew before, even about such common things as cats, pigs, and chickens. [...] Why not? If you were to spend your whole life in studying merely the animals and plants which are to be found in your own state you would not have learned all there is to be known about them."
This is perhaps a reprint of the undated New York Sunday-School Union edition of which four copies are known, among them being Smith College which bears an inscription dated "1863." Our edition is not in OCLC, and copies of any other edition -- if indeed they were actually printed -- are not forthcoming.
With an intriguing, no doubt contemporary white and gold embossed label affixed inside the back cover: "Saxony Thread Edging" with the penciled numeral "114/3" -- perhaps ingeniously repurposed by a bibliophile to help organize her/his library? In any event, the Saxony Thread Edging company has all but evaporated from record: we find only a single reference to it in the LoC Chronicling America website, namely an advertisement in the Aug. 6, 1855 issue of the Daily Gate City newspaper from Keokuk, Iowa: "Saxony Thread Edging - in a great variety - received by D. Foster, April 23, 1855. (Inventory #: 3208)
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