Other researchers with whom I have shared the diary at the American Antiquarian Society, on the other hand, have found it a goldmine of information on topics ranging from the fear of cholera to the naming of days of the week. Also found are mentions of the making of straw bonnets (his trade back at home), the catastrophic ice flows on the Licking and Ohio Rivers (that inundated the new factory), a cannon-fire celebration of Washington's birthday, and the perils of shipping one's bass viol to the frontier (his cracked). The lines of verse that end each entry are from hymns, not surprising since Johnson's older brother, Lowell Mason, was a leading hymn writer and music educator in his day.]]>
The first New Jersey imprint.

For forty-three years I have collected, studied, and written about early New Jersey books and the book trade in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century New Jersey. My collection has formed the basis of several books, including a descriptive bibliography of eighteenth-century New Jersey printing published in 2012.

If New Jerseyana collecting has a Black Tulip, it is the 1723 Perth Amboy laws. Only five other copies are known, with all but one in major institutional collections. Acquiring a copy for myself was so far beyond the realm of possibility that I never considered it. One year ago I acquired this Sammelband of early New Jersey laws that includes the 1723 laws. The volume is annotated throughout by Chief Justice David Brearley (1745–90), who presented it to William Paterson (1745–1806), the second governor of New Jersey (1790–93).]]> Red Channels is an imperfect guide to the supposed political leanings of those in American radio and television suspected by self-anointed “patriots” of being less than one hundred percent “loyal” to the United States. These patriots began their activities in the 1940s with a newsletter (Counterattack), subsequently embellished by special reports such as Red Channels, whose publication is considered to mark the formal beginning of blacklisting in American radio and television (already underway in the movie industry). For me Red Channels serves as a reminder of the anathema of blacklisting that debilitated the American entertainment industries for years. It also remains an important reflection of times that saw widespread hysteria about internal subversion and foreign threats to the United States, some of which proved real.]]> Provenance: Philip D. Sang.

“One of the most striking characteristics of an American is his self dependence. Born to no fortune he knows, from his earliest years, that he has nothing but his own mental and bodily exertions to rely on in the great struggle of existence. This self dependence produces a remarkable quickness and versatility of talent. He turns his mother wit, as the Indian does his knife, to all purposes, and is seldom at a loss. At his first outset in life the world lies before him, like the wilderness of his own country, a trackless waste, through which he must cut his own path; but what would be a region of doubt and despondency to another mind appears to him a land of promise, a region of glorious enterprise tinted with golden hope.”

My Western Americana collection of letters, diaries, books, maps, prints and paintings is focused on people going west for the freedom to change their lives from the bonds of their birth and upbringing to maximize the opportunity to be who they can be. It is about self-realization—the freedom to make your own destiny.

This manuscript was offered at auction in 1976 and I was willing to pay all that I could afford, and accept all the credit that Parke-Bernet would extend to me, to acquire it. These thoughts by Washington Irving, the author of many books about the West, have defined my collection. I have written two books based on my collection (The Western Pursuit of the American Dream and The Great West: Pursuing the American Dream) and this manuscript was the frontispiece in both books.]]> Century Illustrated Magazine 23, nos. 5 and 6 (March 1882 and April 1882), profusely extra-illustrated.

This volume contains a remarkable range of lithographs, engravings, photographs, autograph letters and documents, original drawings, and theater programs and playbills, especially relating to famous sopranos who performed in Italian operas in New York City from 1825–82. Richard Grant White was the father of the architect Stanford White and an author and editor. He had extensive first-hand knowledge of some of the leading Italian opera performers of his era. Those described and portrayed in the volume include Maria Malibran, Marie Alboni, Jenny Lind, Henriette Sontag, Adelina Patti, Maria Picolomini, and Christine Nilsson, among many others. The volume is open to a lithograph of Jenny Lind and an autograph letter by this legendary singer.]]>
Do spend a moment reacting as if you had received the letter from Lincoln. He is very persuasive in a most genteel manner. “I shall be glad if, by your acquaintance with the rich men, you can render him some assistance.”

That this letter and other documents are available for private collectors is wonderful to me. I realize I am but a steward for a period of time and I hope that they will pass on to others at some time, providing future collectors with the pleasure of owning and appreciating these items.]]> As a Theodore Roosevelt scholar, I am intrigued by his love of birds. Aside from his family, politics and birds were the great loves of his life. As president, he established fifty-one protected federal bird sanctuaries. And as an ornithologist in his own right, Roosevelt authored three bird lists. It is interesting to note his transcription of bird sounds and the absence of any significant physical descriptions. Because of his very poor eyesight, young Roosevelt learned to identify birds by their song rather than their plumage.

Published while a student at Harvard, Birds of Oyster Bay is one of the great Roosevelt rarities, and this is the only known copy in a private collection. A 1927 auction catalogue offering this broadside observed that “it is probable that not more than one collection of Roosevelt first editions can ever be complete and none can approach perfection without a copy of this rarest of early first editions.”]]>
Written ca. 600, this work, first in manuscript and then in print, became the major encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. Isidore, archbishop of Seville, is the source of much of our information about the classical period. Etymologiae contains a broad range of knowledge that became the source for information relied on by Renaissance writers when they developed their ideas of ancient Rome.

Medicine comprises a small section in this large compendium, but the entries discuss common conditions such as coma, apoplexy (accurately described as a sudden hemorrhage), epilepsy, sciatica, and symptoms involving most of the major organs. Etymologiae is among the earliest printed texts to discuss an aspect of medicine. It is clear that, to Isidore, the brain is the seat of intellect, memory, and sensation. There are eight woodcut diagrams, including the first printed map of the world, a “T-O” design.
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My primary collection is the Aldine Press, but my eye occasionally wanders to other examples of early Venetian printing. This book is a synchronistic history of the world, in which each column represents the chronological calculations of different empires.

Important dates are printed in red ink, carrying on a tradition from the manuscript era, in which key dates were “rubricated,” or literally written in red ink. Each leaf places world events into the chronology of different traditions, such as the Roman or Jewish calendars, or the Greek Olympiads. Displayed here on the lower half of leaf l2r are the recording (in red letters) of the birth of Christ and the inception of a new chronological system (anni domini). A later reference includes an early mention of Johann Gutenberg. Gutenberg is lauded for his “solerti ingenio,” or ”expert skill,” a phrase that Ratdolt uses in the colophon to characterize his own talents.

The previous owner, Abel Berland, was a member of the Grolier Club from 1967 until his death in 2010.
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