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“A black girle to a faire Boy,” manuscript poem.
These poems—“A Black girle to a faire Boy” and “The Aunsw’r”—were copied out in an italic letterform that includes some characteristics of secretary hand. (Note the use of the raised e throughout.) The poems, written by Henry Rainolds and replied to…
“A Case of Chilled Cupid,” The Argosy,
Wealthy men in Zoe’s fiction have disastrous infatuations with working-class young blondes. In this story for Argosy (part of publisher Frank Munsey’s pulp empire), a rich New Yorker drives his new car to his beloved’s Riverside Drive mansion, where…
“A Compendious English Grammar,” in A New General English Dictionary.
First published eight years after Dyche’s death in 1727, this book was one of the more important pre-Johnson English dictionaries. The “Compendious Grammar” consists of ten pages in the front matter—an early instance of prefacing a dictionary with a…
“A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” in The Monthly Magazine, or British Register of Politics, Literature, Art, Science, and the Belles Lettres.
Provenance: The Alain de Suzannet-Kenyon Starling-William Self copy.
Many first attempts in the literary arts are remarkably modest, with little foreshadowing of fame. Charles Dickens’s first appearance in print was so tentative as to now be…
Many first attempts in the literary arts are remarkably modest, with little foreshadowing of fame. Charles Dickens’s first appearance in print was so tentative as to now be…
“A Grammar of the English Tongue,” in A Dictionary of the English Language.
Samuel Johnson (1709–1786) is one of the two most illustrious writers ever to write an English grammar, the other being the playwright Ben Jonson (whose English Grammar appeared posthumously in 1640). Johnson’s short grammar—essentially the…
“A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed; Relating to the Publication of Worcester’s Dictionary in London,” as Webster’s Dictionary
The 1850s were a crucial decade in the dictionary wars. An unscrupulous British publisher inflamed the situation: Henry G. Bohn acquired the British rights to Worcester’s 1846 Universal and Critical Dictionary, where the preface explained that…
“A Late Arrival At Mother Wood's.”
Attributed to Robert Cruikshank, depicting Queen Caroline’s arrival at Wood's house on 6 June 1820, on her triumphant return from exile for her much disputed and ultimately barred coronation as queen to King George IV.
“A Letter from Hop-O'-My Thumb to Charles Dickens, Esq. Upon ‘Frauds on the Fairies,’ ‘Whole Hog,’ &c.”
A reprint of Cruikshank’s letter to Dickens pleading his case for his version of fairyland in the face of Dickens’ stinging rebuke of the artist for turning the beloved tales into temperance pamphlets. The letter first appeared in the second (and…
“A Literary Fellowship”: Relationships and Rivalries in 19th-century American Literature
Portraits of eighteen literary lights during 19th-century America are set into this red goatskin binding. The inserts are of silver foil on black goatskin. The binding was created by the Sargents in 2018 at their Dragonfly Bindery in Rhode Island.
