Yalensia

New Haven: Thomas H. Pease, College Bookstore, 1856 - 1862, and others. First Edition Thus. Half Calf, Marbled Boards. Very Good. A complicated leatherbound set of nine volumes, consisting of issues of The Yale Literary Magazine (Volumes 21 to 24, 1856 to 1859); a scrapbook (the fifth volume of this set), which is a scrapbook of newspaper clippings from the early 1860s all relating to Yale and compiled, it would appear, by a William H. Anderson; Orations, Poems, &c., which is essentially a sammelband of individually printed speeches, articles, poems and pamphlets from the late 1850s; Miscellany, consisting of three volumes, and this is as the name implies, a sammelband of diverse material, including faculty and student directories, calendars, event programs, materials on extra-curricular activities, prizes, admissions and graduation, songs and music, with some manuscript material (original poetry, etc.). In one of the Miscellany volumes, much of the material is oversized and thus folded. The set is a rich potpourri of Yale-related ephemera from just before and during the Civil War, and although it might be a bit of a cliche, from a time that Yale was in a transition from its tradition as a small regional school to the major research institution and modern academy it was unquestionably within a decade or two after this period. The volumes are not all of the same size, but with their matching bindings and their sequential numbering, it clearly qualifies as a single unified set -- one that is probably one of a kind as such. Wear and light rubbing to the leather. Light shelfwear to the volumes.