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May 2019 Recent Acquisitions

Victory Over Fascism

Ángel Bracho. ¡Victoria! … Destrucción Total del Fascismo (Victory! … Total Destruction of Fascism) (Mexico City: Taller de Gráfica Popular, 1945) Color lithograph. 31.5" x 24". Near fine, colors bright. $1,800

This large, impressive poster is considered one ofthe finest to come out of 20th century Mexico. Itfeatures the Nazi war machine in ruins, at the centerof which an anguished Adolf Hitler is being lanced bya bayonet bearing the mighty red star of the SovietUnion. The flags of the US and England bracket theaction. The artist Ángel Bracho (1911-2005) was oneof the founding members of the Taller de GráficaPopular (People's Graphic Workshop), an artist'sprint collective founded in Mexico City in 1937 to useart to advance revolutionary social causes. The printshop became a base for radical political activity inthe nation's capital and attracted many foreign artistsas collaborators. Taller specialized in linoleum printsand woodcuts. It produced posters, handbills,banners, and portfolio editions, supporting causessuch as anti-militarism, organized labor, andopposition to fascism. The collective took the anti-commercial policy of not numbering prints. WhileBracho is known mainly for his TGP work, he wasalso a muralist, who studied with Diego Rivera. Thefull translation reads: "Victory! The artists of thePopular Graphics Workshop have united to celebrate of all of the progressive workers and men of Mexico and of the world for the glorious victory of the Red Army and of the arms of all of nations united, over Nazi Germany. Let this be seen as the most transcendent step towards the total destructionof fascism." A beauty.

Matty Trapped in a Log Cabin

Boneyshanks (probably Napoleon Sarony). The New Era Whig Trap Sprung (NY: H. R. Robinson, 1840). Lithograph. 12.5" x 15.75". Near fine, with shadowing from old mat. $1,500

This print by the Whig publisher H. R. Robinson suggests that the efforts to reelect Democrat Martin Van Buren were hopeless inthe face of broad popular support for Whig candidate William Henry Harrison. Here oneof Harrison's campaign emblems, a log cabin, is seen as a trap imprisoning the incumbent. The cabin's timbers are labeled with names of twenty states supporting Clay. Its chimney is a cider barrel (another Harrison campaign symbol) on which sits an eagle. Jackson tries to lift the cabin with a "Hickory" lever braced against a cotton bale "New-Orleans,” referencing the hero of New Orleans' personal popularity. To Jackson's frustration the cabin is wedged tightly

against an embankment of "Clay.". Van Buren, pointing to the mound of "Clay," says, "Why General it is of no use trying, there is no hope in the "North" and "East" and don't you see the West end is all chinked up with "Clay." Jackson admonishes him, "Why Matty my boy! What have you been about to let those d---d British Whigs get you in such a fix . . ." Authorities agree that "Boneyshanks" was almost certainly the pseudonym of lithographer and then photographer Napoleon Sarony. Scarce.

Poe, Dupin, and the Murders of the Rue Morgue

Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine (Philadelphia)Vol. 18, No. 1 (January 1841) to Vol. 19, No. 12 (December 1841), comprising twelve issues, bound in modern leather and marbled boards. Octavo. Binding Near fine. Contents VG+, with moderate foxing and a few stains. Numerous hand-colored fashion plates. $1,500

Edgar Allan Poe was editor of thenewly christened Graham's Lady’s andGentleman's Magazine (a merger theprevious December of Atchison'sCasket and Burton's Gentleman'sMagazine). As such, he filled these twovolumes with essays (6), reviews (55),and short stories (5). Not discounting "Descent into the Maelstrom" (May),his most important fictionalcontribution to the volumes was "The Murders of the Rue Morgue" (April). It has been described as the first modern detective story (Poe liked to refer to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination". It starred C. Auguste Dupin, a Parisian, who solves the mystery of the brutal murder of two women. As the first fictional detective, Poe's Dupin displays many traits that became literary conventions in subsequent fictional detectives, including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Many later characters, for example, follow Poe's model of the brilliant detective, his personal friend who serves as narrator, and the final revelation being presented before the reasoning that leads up to it. This year is unaccountably scarce and of value for obvious reasons.

Poe, Dupin, and the Mystery of Marie Roget

The Ladies' Companion (New York)Vol. 17, No. 1 (May 1842) to Vol. 18, No. 6 (April 1843), comprising twelve issues, bound in black leather and marbled boards. Binding VG, handsome, with light general wear. Contents VG, with moderate foxing. Numerous hand-colored fashion plates. $1,000

This volume of an otherwise undistinguished ladies magazine contains all three parts (November and December 1842 and February 1843) of Poe's masterful murder mystery, "The Mystery of Marie Roget," a sequel to his "Murders of the Rue Morgue." Poe based his story on the murder of Mary Rogers, a New York city sales girl, whose body was found in the North River, buthe transplanted the tale to Paris, so that his

fictional French detective, Dupin, could devote his forensic skills to the case. Poe was so proud of his deductive reasoning that he believed his analysis of the case would solve the mystery of Mary Rogers' murder. He wrote in June of 1842, "I believe not only that I have demonstrated the fallacy of the general idea – that the girl was the victim of a gang of ruffians – but have indicated the assassin in a manner which will give renewed impetus to the investigation." After the first installment appeared, however, newspapers reported a version of how Mary Rogers died that differed from Poe's. Though the mystery was never solved, these fresh news reports shook Poe's confidence in his work; he revised the tale before publishing it in book form in 1845. This volume of the Ladies' Companion also contains 36 full-page engravings, of which eleven are fashion plates. Quite scarce.

A Radical Religion's Critique of 1840s America

The Perfectionist / The Perfectionist and Theocratic Watchman (Putney, VT)Vol. 3, No. 1 (February 15, 1843) to Vol. 4, No. 24 (February1, 1845), comprising forty-eight bi-monthly issues, volumesthree and four complete. Folio. Bound in leather and marbledboards. Binding good, spine well worn. Contents near fine,clean and white. $1,500

John Humphrey Noyes (1811 – 1886) was an Americanpreacher, radical religious philosopher, and utopiansocialist. When he was 20, Noyes underwent a religiousconversion, committing himself to the religious life. "Myheart was fixed on the millennium, and I resolved to live ordie for it," Noyes later recalled. While in his second year atYale Theological Seminary Noyes made what he considereda major theological discovery. While attempting todetermine the date of the second coming of Christ, Noyesbecame convinced that the event had already occurred. Hisconclusion was that Christ's second coming had taken placein 70 AD and that therefore "mankind was now living in anew age." With this in mind Noyes became increasinglyconcerned with salvation from sin and with perfection. Heargued with his colleagues that unless man was truly free of

sin, then Christianity was a lie, and that only those who were perfect and free of sin were true Christians. Noyes' idea of Perfectionism, that it was possible to be free of sin in this lifetime, put him ina "new relationship to God [that] canceled out his obligation to obey traditional moral standards or the normal laws of society."

Upon his expulsion from Yale and the revocation of his ministerial license, he moved to Putney, Vermont, where he continued to preach. The Putney community, under his leadership, began in 1836 asthe Putney Bible School and became a formal communal organization in 1844, practicing perfectionism and, among other things, complex marriage, a term Noyes coined. The Perfectionist was the third periodical issued by Noyes. The first two had been issued erratically over nearly ten years. This would be his first regularly published effort. Each handsomely printed 4-page issue contained a substantial doctrinal essay by Noyes, contributions on various spiritual topics by members of the community, essays on other religions and how they compared to Perfectionism, news of the second coming (which the Millerites and others concluded would happen in 1843), editorials, and a page of correspondence from readers.

In 1847, when Noyes was arrested for adultery and other arrest warrants were issued for several ofhis loyal followers, the group left Vermont for Oneida, New York. They settled there, and thus began themost famous chapter in Noyes' life: the Oneida Community.

An Early Elaborately Printed Document Furthering the Nativist Cause

Hector Orr. The Native American: A Gift for the People (Philadelphia: Orr, 1845). Octavo. Decorated paper covered boards. Binding good, with soiling and edge wear. Rebacked spine. Contents VG, with foxing and a shallow stain to upper margin. Full page engraved portraits of the founders. AEG. Inscribed on front decorated leaf presumably in Orr’s hand: "To Jacob Dawes with respect of the publisher". $400

The arrival of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics in the 1840s pushed anti-Catholicism to the forefront of American politics. During this decade, many native-born Americans of various classes gathered under the banner of the American Republican Party to fight the "immigrant hordes." In 1844, publisher Fletcher Harper ran for and won as the American Republican candidate for mayor of New York. In Philadelphia, anti-Catholic orator and Jew Lewis Charles Levin was elected as the party's candidate for congress. The movement appeared to be gaining in strength when Hector Orr (1770-1855), a Massachusetts doctor and mason, paid for the printing of this book to further the cause. The Native American was an elaborate effort in patriotic printing featuring red type and blue borders blue on white paper (with decorated gold section openers). It is one of the earliest books devoted to the Native American movement (later known as the Know-Nothings) and was clearly intended to be a foundational document. It included printings of Washington's farewell address, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and several speeches recently made at Native American conventions around the Northeast. Orr used the

book as a prothletising tool, inscribing this copy to a potential convert.

The Martyr Wears the Crown

Lincoln. Born Feby. 12 1809. Assassinated April 14 1865. Oursthe Cross His the Crown. (NY: H.H. Lloyd & Co., 1865). Handcolored wood engraving. Image: 18.25" x 12.75". Frame: 25.5" x20". Near fine, with a hardly noticeable bit of the blackbackground has been repaired. $1,250

This bold, simple memorial to Lincoln features a monumentto his memory inscribed "Ours the Cross/His the Crown." AnAmerican flag is folded over the top of the monument and twosmall figures of a businessman and a soldier adorn themonument. At the base of the monument are a broken set ofshackles and a woman, Columbia, wearing a crown and a blueand red dress, who weeps. This somber work is, according toWorldcat owned only by the American Antiquarian Society andthe Huntington Library.

A "Great City" on the Connecticut

C. H. Vogt. Turner's Falls, Massachusetts, 1877 (Boston: O. H. Bailey, 1877). Lithograph. Image: 23.5" x 29.5". Frame: 25.5"” x 31.5" VG, uniformly toned with some vertical creasing to the stiff paper(could be pressed out). $800

The village of Turners Falls was founded in 1868 as a planned industrial community by Alvah Crocker, a Fitchburg businessman whoenvisioned in the immense power of the waterfalls the means of establishing a great city. Crocker was influenced by other, earlier and successful experiments in Lowell and elsewhere. Crocker's vision was to attract industry to the town by offering cheap hydropower, made by the harnessing of the Connecticut River, through the construction of a dam and canal. He sold mill sites along the power canal to those companies and individual building lots to mill workers who came to work there. The rest of the village was laid out in a horizontal grid pattern with

cross streets numerically. Avenue A, the main commercial district, was designed as a grand tree lined avenue. The "great city" never materialized, but Turners Falls is as healthy today, celebrated for its brick downtown and arts and food scene, as it ever was. This view depicts the town in its infancy. It includes vignettes along the bottom of the John Russell Cutlery Company, the Farren House, and the Montague Paper Company. Oakley Hoopes Bailey began publishing birds eye views in 1874, though hehad been drawing them for other publishers since the start of the decade. He would continue to publishthem into the 1920s. He was responsible for hundreds of views published in that period, second only to W. Fowler.. Reps in his Views and Viewmakers of Urban America devotes considerable space to the prolific firm.

Bradley in "The Pink"

Will Bradley. May/The Chapbook. ([Chicago: Stone andKimball, 1895]). Image: 16.75" x 14". Mat: 28" x 22".Lithographic poster. Near fine, except for barely detectablehorizontal crease. $1,200

In 1895, Will Bradley made the fate-filled decision toleave his native midwest and move east, to Springfield,Massachusetts, the hub of paper manufacturing inAmerica. He established his studio "at the sign of thedandelion" in the top two floors of a handsome recentlycompleted office building downtown. It was in this studioover the next several years that he would produce much ofhis best work. This beautiful poster, sometimes known as "The Pink," was his fourth for The Chap-Book. It featuresa nude woman holding cymbals amidst a flurry of flowerblossoms. It’s easy to miss the word "May" tucked into thebackground. This poster and one for the first issue of TheEcho appeared on newsstands at the same time, signalingto the world the emergence of a major talent.

From A to Z, in Style

William Nicholson. An Alphabet. (NY: R. H. Russell, 1898). Quarto. Binding VG, with general edge wear. Contents near fine, with glassine protectors present one partially torn away). $800

William Nicholson (1872-1949), half of the Beggarstaff Brothers (the other being his brother-in-law James Pryde), was one of the most influential graphic artists of the 1890s. His bold simple style harkened back to the 18th century and yet seemed to suggest the coming 20th. This book features twenty-sixbeautiful lithographically reproduced woodblock prints in black and ocher with discreet red, blue, and green accents. "A was an artist" is his self-portrait. Nicholson later became a respected still-life, landscape, and portrait painter, illustrated Margery Williams' The Velveteen Rabbit, and taught Winston Churchill how to paint, but he is best known for his suite of boldly designed and executed Fin de siècle children's books, of which An Alphabet is rightly considered to be his finest.