Rare books from Common Crow Books

Newtown, Wales: Gwasg Gregynog, 1990. Hardcover. Fine/Slipcase. 1990, one of only 210 copies, this one rebound in special deluxe binding by John Pearson. Hardcover, folio, 13 x 18.5 inches (33x47 cm). Fine copy in slipcase. Illustrated. A magnificent, artistic binding, with collage style glossy leather and 6 rawhide ties. Unique, colorful endpapers. The lined slipcase is done in full black cloth with title label on spine. The slipcase has some soiling to one of its large sides. Pearson is a member of the Designer Bookbinders and his work has been displayed across the globe.

Freiburg im Breisgau: Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1917. Second edition. Hardcover. Good. Four volumes. Second edition ("Zweite Auflage"), 1917. Folios, cloth hardcovers, heavily illustrated, Good ex-library copies with typical treatments (bookplates, pockets, labels on spine, etc.), wear to the outer pages including creasing and tearing, soiling to some pages and to the page-edges, significant wear to the tips and edges of the covers of the books including fraying and loss, some repair to the spines. Text in German. Uncommon set. These four volumes are large and quite heavy and will require an additional shipping charge.

London: Jennings, 1824. Hardcover. Very Good. 1824, complete in 3 volumes. First printing. Small folio, ca. 1850s half maroon leather, heavily gilt decorated spines, brown cloth boards. Complete with engraved title pages and 80 plates, many of them hand colored. Very good set, minor rubbing to leather, contents very good, clean and bright. Engraved title pages to each volume show old dampstain tidemarks but oddly only these title pages show that, the rest of the text including the printed title pages are clean and bright. Occasionally finger soil and minor spots to text. All edges gilded. Handsome set considered among the greatest of color plate texts on armour. 3 volumes. Digital images available upon request.

Hardcover. Very Good. From the estate of Edmond Roze, a copyist's version in typewritten and manuscript pages, with multiple notes, marginalia, corrections, additions, bound in half cloth and marbled boards, approximately 150 pp. Roze (1878-1943) was a theatre impresario, director, actor and stage manager. The premier of this play featured a set designed by Georges Barbier. Some of the additions are undoubtedly in Rostand's hand, others are by Roze. Rostand was the son of Edmond Rostand, and was openly homosexual, a friend of Jean Cocteau and an author of poems, novels and plays.

Paris: Hermann, 1971. Paperback. Very Good. First printings, 1939-1971, mainly in very good condition, of one of the most important contributions to 20th century mathematics. Also includes Amir D. Aczel's "The Artist and the Mathematician, the story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician who Never Existed" (2006), a book which establishes the greatness and enormous influence of "Bourbaki," as the roots of "New Math," and including its effect on literature and the Oulipo Group. 30 fascicules: the project was ongoing but volumes came out sporadically in the decades after, including revised editions of earlier volumes and additional chapters to previous volumes. This set is from the library of Walter Noll, a well known mathematician who was a long time professor at CMU. In an interview, Noll stated 'I have been accused of being too "Bourbakistic". I plead guilty. I believe the work of Bourbaki was the most important contribution to mathematics in the 20'th century. Bourbaki was not a single… Read More

Philadelphia: George Barrie & Son, 1888. Hardcover. Good. No date, ca. 1888. SIXTH volume only of the 10 volume set limited to 100 copies, this one no. 40 printed for Mr. Mark P. Robinson. Large folio (19.5 inches tall; 49.5 cm) in rich full red leather gilt, with handsome patterned silk endpapers, illustrated with in-text illustrations and smaller gravures on india paper; with mounted and matted plates by some of the great Western artists of the day--each volume contains 12 such prints, photogravures and etchings; this volume includes J. Harrison Mills 'Headwaters of the Grand (Colorado)' (signed photogravure), George H. Gay's 'Seven Falls, Cheyenne Canyon' (signed photogravure), Thomas Moran, 'Royal Gorge' (signed photogravure), Moran's 'Sultan Mountains from Bakers Park' (signed photogravure), Frank A. Tabor's 'Upper Twin Lakes' (signed photogravure), Remington's 'Navajo Sheep-Herder' (signed photogravure), Alexander Schilling's 'Indian Pueblo of Taos' (signed photogravure), Thomas Moessner's… Read More

Paris: L'Ecole Polytechnique, chez l'Auteur, 1801. Hardcover. Good. Printed L'An IX (1801), oblong elephant folio, measuring 28 x 20.75 inches, with engraved title page, engraved plate list, and 90 plates, collated complete. Binding is half black niger and old black pebbled cloth boards, with leather spine label - a recent binding, though the boards appear to be at least a hundred years old. Contents good, with some tide lines from damp stains to bottom left, and marginal dampstains to bottom and right corner, some quite marked, others very faint and hardly noticable; overall the contents are good. All plates in their unfolded states -- some sets were bound with double page plates on hinges.

London: Printed for Mathew Lownes, 1604. First printing. Hardcover. Good. Quarto (10.75 x 8 inches), 18th century vellum over boards, good copy, light restoration to outer joint and inner hinges, front endpapers somewhat soiled and stained, two modern bookplates on pastedown and on flyleaf; with rarely seen portrait frontispiece of Caesar, engraved title page, 3 double-page plates, 2 full page plates -- lacking one double page plate. Contents otherwise very good and clean, minor occasional wear and soil, occasional very short tear to edges. (7) 199 (1) 138 pp. A copy in a lovely contemporary binding and with all plates sold at Christie's in 2008 for a total of over $7300. STC 7490. Edmondes (ca. 1568-1622) was an English government official, possibly in the employ of the Earl of Oxford (Edward de Vere, often mentioned as a possible author of Shakespeare plays). In 1600 he published a commentary on the first five books of Caesar's Commentaries, dedicated to Sir Francis Vere (Born about 1560, Francis… Read More

London and Paris, 1888. First printing. Paperback. Good. First printing of the French edition, translated by Mallarmé, inscribed by Whistler to his friend Antonio de la Gandara, signed with his butterfly monogram. Wraps, good copy with wear and soil to covers, contents good to very good, 29 pp. housed in special cloth chemise. Whistler delivered this lecture to an audience in London in Febrary 1885, deliberately choosing the unfashionable hour of 10pm in order to insure that he wouldn't be competing with dinner or other events. It was a very iconoclastic hour-long talk that was well received and caused a bit of a stir with declarations such as: "If familiarity can breed contempt, certainly Art—or what is currently taken for it—has been brought to its lowest stage of intimacy. The people have been harassed with Art in every guise, and vexed with many methods as to its endurance. They have been told how they shall love Art, and live with it. Their homes have been invaded, their walls covered with… Read More

Braunschweig & Wolfenbüttel: Self Published, 1734. First printing. Hardcover. Good. Small folio (14 x 9 inches), original leather boards, recent cloth spine with paper spine label, contents very good and complete, light wear and light waterstain to bottom of inner margin of contents, mildly visible on the plates and text. 368, 1136, 64 pp. Has both volumes as well as the 64 pp. supplement on mining in Sweden, and has all 53 plates (13, 37, 3 plates, lacking plate 11 of the second volume as always), 40 of which are folding. The first general survey of mining and mineralogy worldwide, including the Americas (not in Sabin) and drawing on the work of Agricola, Muenser and others. Includes accounts of the mines in Mexico, Chile, Paraguay, Florida, Canada, Peru, Brazil, and Guiana. One plate shows the American natives searching for gold in the river beds. At auction, copies in varying conditions have fetched between $2000 and $4500 in the last 20 years, with a high price of $7800 including the hammer at… Read More

Paris: Gauthiers-Villars, 1912. First printing. Hardcover. Very Good. 14 volumes, quarto (10.75 x 8.75 inches), quarter morocco over patterned paper-covered boards, very good with minor ex-library marks from the Hill Library in St. Paul: call numbers on lower spines in white (probably removable), perforated blind stamp on titles, small withdrawn stamp on versos of titles, small ink number stamp on one of the first pages after titles. Probably unread from what we can tell: contents very bright and fresh. A handsome set that hardly ever comes up at auction or in commerce.

Very Good. Mounted on 8 x 10 stiff gray card mounting sheets, 49 sheets in all, mostly 9 x 6.75 inch photographs, but sometimes smaller, and as many as 4 to a sheet, with three sheets having photos mounted on the versos, too. Captions sometimes present in handwritten German, dated 1905, mentioning Pietermaritzburg, Henley, Mt. Edgecomb, Durban, and others are captioned within the plate in English and are by Joseph Barnett, a well known photographer of South Africa. All in very good to fine condition. Photos of men, women, children, elders, warriors, farmers, the domiciles, meetings and other activities, a very robust group of strong images.

(Paris), 1953. First Printing. Wraps. Very good. 7 x 5 inches, tan wraps, hand-bound with blue string. 13 pp. Housed in a yellow mailing envelope with some scattered random notes by Stern. Technically Stern's first book: he wrote it with his former wife Patricia while living in Paris in 1953. Stern wrote the poem, she did the drawings, except for one; she was a former art student at Carnegie Tech, a classmate of Philip Pearlstein and Andy Warhol. After writing the book, Stern forgot about it for about "fifty years or so" until it was discovered behind some books in his home in Lambertville, NJ. In an introduction to a facsimile reprint published in 2018, Stern wrote: "Donna is a wise little girl, or more appropriately an owl -- the bird of wisdom -- disguised as a little girl, and leading two lives, one as a judge among the animals -- at night -- and one as a good and obedient daughter with her (human) family." Stern, who just died at the beginning of 2023, was one of the greatest poets of his… Read More

Boston: J.B. Millet Company, 1897. Yedo edition. Hardcover. Very good+. Ten volume complete set! Yedo edition, this no. 17 of 1000 copies, folios [12.5" x 16"] bound in colorful printed cloth with tied bindings and mounted title plates on front boards, total of 382pp., each volume illustrated with color floral plate at front, three hand colored albumen prints, and various b&w illustrations (collated, all present). Books show strain to cloth at corners and spine ends, rubbing and gentle soil to boards, hint of sun to spines, bindings tight, endpapers have mild soil to endpapers, one small hole on one plate page that does not affect image (hole is in perimeter space around image), texts clean and unmarked, with all tissue guards present, beautiful plates and clean text. THIS LARGE, HEAVY SET WILL REQUIRE ADDITIONAL SHIPPING FEES.

Pittsburgh: Joseph Horne Company, 1886. Hardcover. Good. 14 x 9.5 inches, leatherbound ledger in good condition with leather somewhat worn and rubbed, especially at edges and corners of boards, contents very good. With 432 pp, the vast majority of them filled out, recording receipts, sales, accounts, expenditures, expenses, purchase of merchandise, bills receivable, profit & loss, not only for the main store but also for the Wood St. wholesale location. Dates from Feb. 1884 to the end of September 1886. Joseph Horne (1826-1892) is cited frequently, as is Durbin Horne (1854-1916), who started working in the store in retail sales in 1876 and was made a partner in 1882. Durbin was responsible for the rapid expansion of the store in the 1880-1900s, including in 1892 at the Penn Ave. location. The store was founded in 1849, one of the first multi-storied urban department stories in America, and was a large presence in Pittsburgh's downtown retail sector. The store was initially located on Market Street,… Read More