Search Results: Authors starting with L from William Reese Company

[N.p.], 1746. 108pp. plus folding plate. Polished black calf, gilt. Joints worn, ex- lib. with bookplates, blindstamp on rear cover. A few leaves tanned, else internally very nice and clean. La Condamine was a member of a scientific party dispatched to the equator by the French Academy of Science to assist in the exact measurement of the size of the earth, and their findings resulted in some of the most informative and interesting works of the time. In addition to their scientific observations, the expedition is famous for the tragic event narrated in the present work (here in the first edition), the murder of the expedition's surgeon in Cuenacas for his involvement with a local woman. The plate depicts the riot which took place in the arena in Cuenacas, where the surgeon was killed. This work was also published with accounts of the voyage. SABIN 38481. EUROPEAN AMERICANA 746/109.

New York: MacMillan and Co., 1895. vi,270,[1]pp. Original maroon cloth, gilt-lettered cover and spine. Light wear to binding. Front inner hinge cracked. Front fly leaf and half title loose; contemporary presentation inscription on front fly leaf. Internally clean. Good. A collection of lectures on La Farge's approach to painting, originally delivered as a series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1893. Each lecture is accompanied by a brief synopsis. This copy is inscribed by La Farge to his student, the painter Anne Mary Richards Brewster: "Anna with much love from John Christmas 1895." It would seem that the two had some romantic involvement, as La Farge did with a number of women.

Montreal: Ludger Duverna, 1834. 75pp. Contemporary plain wrappers. Rear wrapper creased and separated along lower half of spine. Light foxing in lower margin of text. Overall internally clean. Very good. A scathing anti-British political tract, offering strong evidence of the early combative tone between French-Canadian officials who resented British control and their resident British counterparts. The controversy surrounded the apparent ideological defection of two prominent Canadian lawmakers, Dominique and Charles Mondelet. Scarce. TPL 1841. OCLC 7238167.

Boston: Printed for Joseph Bumstea, 1801. 333pp. Contemporary tree calf, rebacked in modern calf, ruled in gilt, gilt leather label. Corners and edges worn, boards moderately rubbed. Bookplate on front pastedown (see below). Moderate tanning, scattered foxing. Good plus. This copy bears the bookplate on the front pastedown of James Edge Partington (1854- 1930), the well-respected British anthropologist who was especially interested in Pacific island ethnology. The rare first American edition of one of the most important Pacific voyages. The La Pérouse account was first published in Paris in French in 1797, and in English in 1798. This is one of the earliest Pacific voyages to appear in an American edition and, published much less modestly than the French and British editions, would have been the way the average American would have learned about La Pérouse's important surveys of the Pacific coast and his descriptions of native Americans there. This is also the first American version (although only… Read More

[Paris, 1792. Lithograph, image 39 x 25 cm., captioned. A couple of small tears and smudges at edges of border, image fine. Archival matting, and protected with Mylar sheet. Print of a plate taken from La Pérouse's atlas of his voyage around the world undertaken in 1785-88. The image shows two Indian girls seated under a tree, one facing forward, the other in profile, both clad in primitive garb, with two masted ships and onlookers in the background.

Milano: Dalla Tipografia Sonzogno e Comp., 1815.. Four volumes. xviii,236,[26]; 296; 272; iv,298,[28]pp., plus frontispiece portrait, sixteen handcolored plates, folding map in volume four (handcolored in outline), and laid-in publisher's notices in volumes three and four. 12mo. Original pictorial wrappers. Minor soiling to wrappers, chip to upper outer corner of front wrapper of first volume, very slight chipping to extremities of spines. Light foxing to first few pages of first volume. An exceptional set. Untrimmed. In individual cloth chemises and cloth slipcase, gilt leather label. The first Italian edition of La Pérouse's monumental journey, here in beautiful original condition, and rarely encountered thus. "La Pérouse's expedition was one of the most important scientific explorations ever undertaken to the Pacific and the west coast of North America....The charge to the expedition was to examine such parts of the region as had not been explored by Captain Cook; to seek for an interoceanic… Read More

Seattle; Skagway, 1900. Twelve photographs, each approximately 4 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches. Overall very good. A collection of photographs taken by Seattle photographer Frank La Roche. La Roche (1853- 1934), a Philadelphia native transplanted to the Northwest, established a photography studio in Seattle in 1889. He undertook many trips to Alaska, documenting the Klondike Gold Rush at length from 1897 to 1899. This group contains images of Juneau, Sitka, Fort Wrangell (here spelled Wrangle), and Taku Glacier. Two images are of Chilkat Tlingit Indians, and one photo of the Seymour Rapids in British Columbia is also included. Each is numbered and captioned in manuscript or in print within the negative. Exemplary images from this noted landscape photographer of Alaska and the West

Pari, 1800. Two text volumes plus atlas. Text volumes: xvi,440; 332,110,[2]pp. Atlas: Title-leaf, folding chart of the Pacific, and forty-three engraved plates. Contemporary half gilt calf and boards. Slight wear to spine of atlas and outer edge of front board, else a fine set. The first edition of this narrative by the naturalist on the d'Entrecasteaux expedition in search of the great French navigator, La Pérouse, whose party disappeared without a trace in 1788. D'Entrecasteaux's party searched Australian waters and north to New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, and New Caledonia. Labillardière's account is particularly interesting for its descriptions and illustrations of Tasmania and the islands mentioned above. The atlas contains important views of these areas by the artist, Piron, as well as fourteen botanical plates engraved by Redouté. The expedition twice circumnavigated Australia, as well as its island stops, although it was beset by difficulty throughout. D'Entrecasteaux died in… Read More

Montréa: Librairie Saint-Joseph, 1897. 86,[1]pp. Original printed wrappers, spine faded and chipped. Manuscript inscription on front wrapper. Tanned, corners lightly worn. Good. A turn-of-the-20th-century tract on perceived issues and problems affecting schools in Manitoba, presented in the form of a dialogue and from a Catholic, French Canadian perspective. Jean DesPrairies was a pseudonym for Pierre-Zacharie Lacasse, a Catholic religious figure in Québec and author of several pamphlets on educaction. OCLC 184851864

Pari, 1789. Two volumes. 17,[1],651; [4],19,[1],144,527pp., plus sixty-three plates and two large folding tables. Thick quarto. Contemporary patterned calf, spines gilt, leather labels. Head and foot of spines chipped, corners lightly bumped, hinges tender. Minor scattered foxing. Table in front of first volume torn in gutter margin. Very good. "One of the earliest treatises on natural history by this associate of Buffon" - Wood. Lacepede planned his work after assisting Buffon in his famous HISTOIRE NATURELLE. This work covers reptiles, and a later work concerned itself with fishes. Lacepede always retained a love of an elegant and elevated style, characteristic of Buffon's work, but after his death in 1789 Lacepede increasingly came under the influence of Daubenton. The treatise is illustrated with sixty-three full page engravings showing lizards, turtles, frogs, and snakes. A distinguishing feature of Lacepede's work is the large folding tables containing classifying orders according to the… Read More

New York: John Wilson and Daniel Hitt for the Methodist Conenction, 1808. 189,[2]pp. 12mo. Contemporary calf, spine ruled in gilt. Calf moderately scuffed and worn, minor toning, else very good. Second American edition of the legendary bookseller's last autobiographical work. In his earlier memoirs, Lackington had described his "strange rise" to celebrity and fortune as the proprietor of "probably the greatest book-store in the known world," attacking Christianity and the Methodists who had helped him along the way. In the present work, the author re-examines his career and his religious life, detailing his personal experience of the conflict between Deism and Christianity and describing his ultimate reconversion to Methodism. SHAW & SHOEMAKER 15385.

[Paris: Philibert-Louis Debucourt, 1817].. Monochrome aquatint, 21 x 27 inches (54 x 68 cm). Light soiling, closed tears in margins, most repaired, including two extending into upper portion of image. Lower right corner reattached and reinforced on verso. Very good overall. One of the earliest and best representations of the Battle of New Orleans, the final engagement of the War of 1812, in which American forces under Andrew Jackson decisively routed the numerically superior British forces invading Louisiana. The battle took place on January 8, 1815, and was the culmination of Britain's months-long campaign to take what was then the southwestern boundary of the United States. The artist, a topographical engineer in the First Louisiana Militia, presents a firsthand bird's-eye view of the engagement at Chalmette Plantation, with the strong American defenses under Jackson handily repulsing the British forces who advance along the riverbank with as many ladders and FASCINES as rifles. Jackson himself… Read More

Leiden: Elzevier, 1633. [32],690,[i.e. 590],[18]pp. plus fourteen double-page maps by Hessel Gerritsz. Sixty- eight woodcuts in text illustrating plants, animals, and inhabitants of the New World. Engraved titlepage with elaborate emblematic and architectonic border, with date altered in manuscript to "1688." Half title. Folio. Contemporary speckled calf, spine gilt, raised bands, text block edges stained red. Spine ends repaired, moderate edge wear, joints a bit worn. Some foxing and toning, occasional tanning. Small, unobtrusive marginal repair to most maps. Overall very good. The first Latin edition of "arguably the finest description of the Americas published in the seventeenth century" - Burden. The maps include the first to use the names Manhattan, New Amsterdam (for New York), and Massachusetts, and one of the foundational maps of Canada. This work is one of the most important 17th- century New World histories. It is a cornucopia of early knowledge of the Americas and was compiled by Joannes… Read More

Boston [i.e. Paris]: De l'Imprimerie du Congres, 1778.. 37,[9]pp. 19th-century half calf and green paper boards, corners tipped in vellum, spine richly gilt. Very clean internally. Near fine. A rare and interesting poem, carrying a false Boston imprint, and supposedly penned by the Marquis de Lafayette while wintering with George Washington and the Continental Army in January 1778. The poem, a sort of farewell from Lafayette to his wife, contains allegorical references to the struggle of the colonies for liberty, while the notes mention this struggle specifically. Although the imprint is "Boston," the piece was almost certainly printed in Paris, and the types and ornaments used seem distinctively French. Other evidence leading us to believe that it was not printed in America: George Washington's name is badly misspelled on the titlepage; he was quartered at Valley Forge, not at Lancaster, in January 1778; and the title says it was printed in Boston, "by the press of the Continental Congress," though… Read More

Hartford: S. Andrus & So, 1846. 504pp. Modern black cloth, stamped in blind, spine gilt. Bookplate on front and rear pastedowns. Foxing and toning throughout. In a black cloth slipcase. Good plus. A biography of the Marquis de Lafayette, renowned for his devotion to helping America fight the British during the Revolution

Paris: Saugrain and Charles Estienne Hochereau, 1724.. Two volumes. [8],610pp. plus twenty-one plates including frontispiece and map; [26],490,[41]pp. plus twenty-two plates. Quarto. Contemporary calf, gilt, stamped with the arms of the House of Chimay on both covers, spines gilt extra, leather labels. Extremities lightly worn, some scuffing to covers, head and foot of spine chipped. Bookplate on front pastedowns. Very minor scattered foxing. Very good. A detailed account of the customs, manners, and religion of indigenous Americans. The work focuses mainly on the First Nations of Canada, with over thirty pages of the second volume devoted to the language of the Hurons. The author was a Jesuit missionary among the Iroquois at Sault St. Louis. "An extraordinary summation of seventeenth century knowledge of the life and society of the American Indian. Lafitau's comparison of Indian societies with ancient Asian societies was an attempt to demonstrate the Asian origin of the American Indian" - Streeter.… Read More

Pari, 1814. 91pp. Dbd. Contemporary inscription on verso of half title. Ink stamps on titlepage and first few leaves. Otherwise quite clean. Good. First edition. History of the conspiracy of General Claude François de Malet, who was executed in October of 1812 after a failed coup to topple Napoleon's government.

Amsterda: Chez Francois l'Honore, 1705. Two volumes. [18],376pp. plus eleven folding plates and a frontispiece; 336 ,[2]pp. plus nine folding plates and a frontispiece map (most plates and maps folding). Lacks the map, "Carte de la Riviere Longue." Titlepages printed in red and black. 12mo. Contemporary calf, spines gilt. Front board of second volume detached; front board of first volume nearly so, held by cords. Boards rubbed and worn, chipped at spine ends. Institutional blindstamp on both titlepages, and in a few other instances. Quite clean internally overall. A decent copy, although lacking a map. In a green half morocco and cloth slipcase, gilt leather label. Second edition, variant issue, with the imprint of François l'Honore, "revue, corrigee, & augmentee." Lahontan's narrative is a curious blending of fact and fantasy, to be honored in regard to his account of his travels in the Great Lakes region, but to be accompanied by tongue placed amply in cheek in regard to his claims to have… Read More

The Hagu: Charles Delo, 1706. Two volumes. [18],376; [2],5-336,[2]pp., plus twenty-seven plates (most folding, and including one large folding map, "Carte Que Les Gnacsitares...Carte de la Riviere Longue..."). 12mo. Contemporary speckled calf, neatly rebacked, spine gilt, leather labels. Minor edge wear. Bookplate on each pastedown, light occasional foxing, large folding map bound upside down. Very good. Second edition of Lahontan's narrative, a curious blending of fact and fantasy. His account of his travels in the Great Lakes region is one of the most important travel narratives of the day, but his claims to have journeyed west of the Mississippi are highly doubtful. However, his assertions had great impact on geographers of the time, who adopted much of his imaginary geography. The most notable map is the "Carte Que Les Gnacsitares...Carte de la Riviere Longue...," depicting an imaginary river extending westward from Lake Superior. The "Carte Generale de Canada," the frontispiece in the second… Read More

The Hague: Chez les Freres l'Honore, 1703.. Two volumes. [24],279pp. plus frontispiece, two folding maps, and eleven plates (two folding); 220,[17]pp. plus folding map and eleven plates (three folding). 12mo. Later 19th-century half calf and marbled boards, spines gilt. Extremities rubbed. Large folding map reinforced at folds. Some light toning and soiling. About very good. First edition, third issue with the titlepages all in black and the globe vignette, with the maps re-engraved and improved. This is cartographically the best edition. Lahontan's narrative is a curious blending of fact and fantasy. His account of his travels in the Great Lakes region is one of the most important travel narratives of the day, but his claims to having travelled west of the Mississippi are highly doubtful; however, his assertions had great impact on geographers of the time, who adopted much of his imaginary geography. The most notable map in the book is the "Carte de la Riviere Longue," depicting an imaginary river… Read More