Hooton, Charles
xiii,[3],204pp., plus six lithographic plates (including frontis. portrait) and [3]pp. of ads. Half title. Original publisher's embossed teal cloth, spine gilt. Cloth lightly worn and soiled, spine faded. Bookplate on front pastedown, large tear in rear free endpaper, mended with tissue. Occasional tanning. Small closed tear to outer margin of page xiii and to final ad leaf, not affecting text. Very good. Partially untrimmed. In a half blue morocco and cloth clamshell case, spine gilt. An account of the author's journey and short- lived residence in Galveston, Texas, in search of health. Hooton, an Englishman, had travelled to Texas, arriving in Galveston on March 29, 1841, but left shortly thereafter in December of the same year, returning to England by way of New Orleans, New York, and Toronto. Lured by promises of "the salubrity of the Texan paradise" and descriptions of Galveston as "the head-quarters of modern Texas in population, in commercial importance, in the civilization of its society, in religion, education, morals, and literature," Hooton found himself sorely disappointed upon his arrival. With the present work, he hoped to offer a "few chapters upon a country" which he "had the misfortune to visit." His aim, he explains, is to "persuade, through the influence of facts, any projecting Emigrants from following in the same fatal footsteps." Despite the changed political circumstances since his journey six years earlier - Texas had since been annexed by the United States in 1845 - Hooton expresses little hope that "Texas, under her new form of government, can offer the slightest atom of additional temptation to Northern Emigrants, to what was offered when the following pages were written." As he goes on to explain, "whatever alteration the form of government may have undergone.the climate has not changed along with it. There still remain the same sun, the same brick-burned earth - the same pestilent, sweltering bayous, in which the fish that cannot escape get cooked (though not literally boiled) to death, as before." Eberstadt notes that "[t]he title is the French form of the Old Spanish Name for Galveston Island." ST. LOUIS' ISLE was published posthumously in 1847. Hooton had died earlier that year from an overdose of morphine being used to treat the malaria he had contracted while in Galveston. In addition to the frontispiece portrait of Hooton, the present volume includes five lithographed plates taken from sketches by Hooton, intended to "convey a just and accurate idea of the nature of the place in which they were made." The plates consist of the following: "Settlers Houses on the Prairie"; "Scene on a Bayou"; "Galveston, from the Gulf Shore"; "General Hospital"; and "The âFever' Burial Ground." An interesting account of a foreigner's journey to Texas, with some of the earliest published views of the Houston-Gulf Coast region. HOWES H626, "aa." SABIN 32892. EBERSTADT 114:761. RAINES, p.118. BRADFORD 2372. TYLER, TEXAS LITHOGRAPHS, pp.66-71.
Muybridge, Eadweard
Albumen photographic panorama mounted on eleven panels, the entire panorama measuring a total of 7 1/2 x 87 1/4 inches. Caption title, photographic credit, and publisher's imprint printed on center panel. [with:] PANORAMA OF SAN FRANCISCO FROM CALIFORNIA-STREET HILL. KEY. San Francisco: Morse's Gallery, 1877. Albumen photograph, 7 3/4 x 10 1/2 inches, mounted on slightly larger printed card reading "Muybridge, Photo., Morse's Gallery. San Francisco" at the foot. PANORAMA: Each panel backed by cloth and tipped into original burgundy cloth portfolio, front board stamped in gilt. Cloth a bit rubbed and stained, worn at the edges, corners, and spine ends. The images themselves are very clean and bright. KEY: Some light soiling to the margins of the card mount, trimmed close along the right edge. Overall, the panorama and the key are in near fine condition. One of the landmarks of 19th-century American photography, and an iconic panoramic image of San Francisco, accompanied by the extraordinarily rare KEY to Muybridge's work. This remarkable panorama shows the dramatic growth of San Francisco nearly thirty years after the onset of the Gold Rush. In the 1870s, San Francisco audiences were hungry for panoramic displays, and the rest of the country was intrigued by San Francisco, the largest city in the West. Muybridge satisfied all appetites by providing a 360° view of the city, creating what Rebecca Solnit calls "an impossible sight, a vision of the city in all directions, a transformation of a circular space into a linear photograph." David Harris calls Muybridge's San Francisco panorama "one of the supreme conceptual and technical achievements in the history of architectural photography." Eadweard Muybridge took the photographs that make up this panorama from a vantage point on the central tower of the unfinished Nob Hill residence of railroad baron Mark Hopkins, then the highest point in the developed portion of the city. The work was done in June or July, 1877 and took some five hours to complete, based on the shifting shadows seen in the image. Muybridge began in the late morning with a view toward the southwest (the tenth plate in the panorama) and proceeded in a clockwise direction, moving his camera away from the sun from one image to the next. Muybridge's view is from some 380 feet above sea level, and the view reaches some fifty miles into the distance and encompasses a width of fifteen miles. Despite the great scope of the work, precise details of the city are visible throughout, and one can clearly see hanging laundry, ships in the harbor, shop signs, and a clock on a tower in the fifth panel reading nearly five-thirty (other copies of the panorama show the clock reading one forty-five). San Francisco spreads throughout the panorama, and the dynamism of the city is clearly evident, as many unfinished buildings and roads under construction are also seen. Muybridge's panorama was advertised as being for sale in July 1877, offered for eight dollars rolled or ten dollars accordion- folded and bound, as in the present copy. Buyers could purchase the panorama directly from Muybridge, or through Morse's Gallery. This copy of Muybridge's panorama is especially desirable, as it is accompanied by the exceedingly rare KEY to the image, produced about a month after the PANORAMA itself. The KEY is a very interesting piece of photography and promotion itself, essentially serving three purposes. First, it was used to promote the sale of Muybridge's magnificent eleven-part panorama, showing the entirety of the image and advertising that Muybridge was a "landscape, marine, architectural, and engineering photographer," an official photographer for the U.S. government, and a Grand Prize medalist at the Vienna Exhibition in 1873. It also advertises other photographic work available at Morse's Gallery, including images of California, Alaska, Mexico, and the Isthmus of Panama, as well as "horses photographed while running or trotting at full speed," a direct reference to Muybridge's pioneering work photographing horses in motion. Second, it is a detailed key to the panorama itself, identifying 221 locations numbered in the negative, corresponding to a key below the image of the city. Finally, it is a significant, separately-issued panoramic view of San Francisco in its own right. David Harris notes: "In addition to major geographical features like the Golden Gate and Angel Island, Muybridge identifies private residences, businesses, and institutions which by the late 1870s had, as much as the natural landscape itself, given the city its identifiable character. His list features religious and educational institutions, a range of the city's industries.major governmental and commercial structures, and the homes of some of the city's best-known and wealthiest residents. Where his camera angle allows clear views of entire rows of comfortable residences, as on Bush Street west of Jones, or Pine Street west of Mason, the photographer has included every homeowner's name in his annotations. The presences of these owners.suggests that Muybridge was as much concerned with marketing his images to interested residents as he was with producing a definitive listing of the city's elite." The KEY is decidedly rarer than the PANORAMA itself. Aside from the present copy, Rare Book Hub reports only two other copies of the KEY and PANORAMA together at auction, at Sotheby's in 1979 and in the Streeter sale in 1968; and RBH records only a single copy of the PANORAMA and KEY together in the trade, offered by Charles Wood in 1987. So, to our knowledge, only four copies of the KEY and the PANORAMA have sold together over the last fifty-six years, as opposed to more than a dozen copies of the PANORAMA alone at auction and in the trade in that same time period. Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) was one of the great photographic innovators of the 19th century. Born in England, he came to San Francisco in 1855 and built his reputation
[San Francisco]
Lithographed map, issued as a letter sheet, measuring 9 x 11 inches and printed on blue paper. In a cloth chemise and half morocco and cloth slipcase, spine gilt. Very lightly silked on the verso, repairing neat splits along folds, and some tears in the top edge. Very good. In a cloth chemise and half morocco and cloth slipcase, spine gilt. An early and important map of the developing city of San Francisco, issued as a letter sheet by the lithographic firm of Britton & Rey. It shows the city bounded by San Francisco Bay, the Presidio Ranch, and Mission Creek and Tracy Street. Most significantly, it shows proposed extensions of the city's waterfront area into the bay. Speculation in these proposed lots was running rampant at the time, and the city had sold "water lots" in the central business district as early as 1847 in order to pay down municipal debt. Planked streets are shown in darker tones, and the extra width of Market and California streets is indicated. The "Mission Plank Road," a toll road built in 1851, is also indicated. A vignette of a building in the lower right corner is captioned "Page Bacon & Co. - Adams & Co.," showing the offices of the important banking firms that likely commissioned the map. A key gives the locations of City Hall, the post office, customs house, places of worship, etc. "The date was derived from comparisons with the B.F. Butler map of 1852 and the Zakreski map of 1853" - Streeter. Baird locates only three copies of this scarce and important early San Francisco map. BAIRD, CALIFORNIA'S PICTORIAL LETTER SHEETS 149. CLIFFORD LETTER SHEET COLLECTION 155. WOODBRIDGE, SAN FRANCISCO IN MAPS & VIEWS, pp.52-54. PETERS, CALIFORNIA ON STONE, p.83. STREETER SALE 3885. EBERSTADT 158:31.
Viana, Francisco Javier de
[2],360pp., including two titlepages. Each page of text is printed within a decorative border. Contemporary marbled boards, rebacked in modern brown morocco with modern brown morocco corners. Boards slightly rubbed and shelfworn. A few gatherings tanned, leaf with pp.115-116 bound out of order. A very good copy. In a brown cloth clamshell box, spine gilt. A very rare work, the first published account of the Malaspina expedition of 1789-94. Malaspina, an Italian who sailed under the Spanish flag, was for a long time virtually forgotten. Nevertheless, his voyage of circumnavigation stands as Spain's most important 18th-century scientific exploration in the Pacific. Although an official publication was envisioned from the start, with artists and scientists aboard working towards its production, Malaspina became the victim of Spanish court intrigues, and the elaborate expedition report never materialized. It was not until 1885 that his narrative was published in Madrid. The present book thus stands as the first publication on the Malaspina expedition. It is based on the narrative of an ensign on the voyage, Francisco Viana, who settled in Uruguay towards the beginning of the 19th century. According to Palau, Viana's account was prepared for publication by D. Manuel Dribe, who worked with the manuscript which was still in the possession of Viana's sons in Montevideo. Viana's narrative adds greatly to the later publication of Malaspina's account, elaborating with much detail on the visits to the northwest coast of America (Nootka), Australia (describing Port Jackson barely five years after its settlement), Manila, Acapulco, Monterey, Tierra del Fuego, Islas Malvinas, and Patagonia. Malaspina's expedition is one of the great voyages of exploration of the 18th century and is often likened to the exploits of La Pérouse and Captain Cook. "Malaspina left Cadiz in 1789 and visited the western coast of North America as far as 60 degrees North latitude. He then returned to South America, by way of the Philippine Islands and Australia, rerounded Cape Horn, and reached Cadiz in 1794. During his voyage he visited Nootka Sound and Monterey; he gives an account of his explorations on the California coast. The work also contains Ferrer Maldonado's relation of the discovery of the Straits of Anian; accounts of the principal Spanish expeditions to the North Pacific between 1774 and 1791; a description of the country and customs of California; and a long historical introduction of the voyage by Pedro de Novo y Colson" - Hill (describing the 1885 publication of Malaspina's narrative). "This diary is of immense value. It is the only full and detailed printed account of Malaspina's voyage from California to Alaska by one of the participants.For some reason, Viana's diary was published on the traveling press of the Army besieging Montevideo, during the war between Argentina and Uruguay. This is the reason for the extreme rarity of this important diary, not recorded by Sabin or Wagner" - Lada Mocarski. Not in the catalogue of the Hill Collection, though there is a copy at the University of California at San Diego. An important and exceedingly rare Pacific voyage account. FERGUSON 5100, 5228. PALAU 361688. HOWES V85. LADA-MOCARSKI 134. TOURVILLE 4696. WICKERSHAM 6642.
[Icarian Community]: [Cabet, Etienne]
240pp. 12mo. Original printed brown wrappers, expertly rebacked in matching brown paper. Wrappers a bit soiled, worn at edges. Small tear in upper margin of p.239, neatly repaired and not affecting text. Quite clean internally, and in very good condition. Untrimmed and unopenend. A scarce French printing of the principles, history, laws, constitution, and status of the Icarian communities in the United States. Founded by Étienne Cabet, the Icarian Community was among the most interesting Utopian experiments in the United States during the 19th century. After an unsuccessful attempt to settle in Texas, the Icarians established themselves in Nauvoo, Illinois, an abandoned Mormon town. After Cabet's death in 1856, the group splintered, with some of the remaining Illinois group moving to Corning, Iowa. This volume, published in the year of Cabet's death, offers his description of the community and the principles of its founding and operation, as well as the laws and constitution that governed them. We find no copies at auction since the Streeter sale in 1969, where a copy in wrappers was purchased by H.P. Kraus for $160. SABIN 9779. HOWES C5, "aa." STREETER SALE 4267.
