5 lettersheets with lithograph vignettes, Including: "Central Park Scenery, New York" (16 vignettes of the Park hand coloured); "Norfolk, Portsmouth, VA."; "North East View of the Capitol at Washington, with the New Extension" (hand colored); United-States Firemen" (hand coloured); and "Deutsche Friedensfeste in Amerika

New York: Charles Magnus, 61 Bowery. Most bifoliums. 4to (Largest 21" x 9-1/2" unfolded). Mostly fine. Provenance: Estate of James and Katherine Abbe, Long Island, New York. Most bifoliums. 4to (Largest 21" x 9-1/2" unfolded). A lovely group of lettersheets by Charles Magnus, entirely typical of his output. Lettersheets were a convenient and thrifty form of stationery in an era which postage was calculated on the number of sheets used. Folded in half, these four pages were charged as a single page.

Charles Magnus emigrated to New York with his family in the late 1840s. His older brother published the weekly German language newspaper, Deutsche Schnellpost, and it was there that Charles learned the trade, eventually going out on his own. In the guises of a publisher, map dealer, bookseller and stationer, he issued more than a thousand pieces of illustrated stationery - lettersheets, envelopes, song sheets, as well as prints - usually copying the work from other sources without attribution, sometimes altering the images slightly. He continued to use lithography and hand-coloring long after other publishers turned to photomechanical reproduction processes. (Inventory #: 300751)