MARTINO PUBLISHING

Plomer - Proskouriakoff

Plomer, Henry Robert. English Printers' Ornaments. $65.00

Octavo. Hardcover. xii, 291 p. [1] p. incl. front., plates. London, Grafton & Co., 1924.

Printer’s ornaments include tail and head pieces, initial letters, borders to title-pages or text, and decorative blocks. Plomer covers the period from the beginning of printing in England to the time of publication. Profusely illustrated and fully indexed.

Plomer, Henry Robert . A Dictionary of the Booksellers And Printers Who Were At Work In England, Scotland And Ireland From 1641 To 1667. $65.00

Octavo. 2 p. l., [vii]-xxiii, [1], 199 p. London, Printed for the Bibliographical Society, by Blades, East & Blades, 1907

The object of this work is to bring together the information available respecting the men and women who printed and sold books during this period in England, Scotland and Ireland. The information consists of imprints showing the various places in which booksellers and printers carried on their trade. The arrangement of the material is alphabetical by name.

Plomer, H.R., Bushnell, G. H., Dix, E. R. McC.

A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were At Work In England, Scotland And Ireland From 1726 To 1775. $75

Octavo. Hardcover.  xxi, 432 p.  Printed for the Bibliographical Society at the Oxford University Press 1932 [for 1930]. ISBN 1578986966.

Among the most significant undertakings of the Bibliographical Society in the U.K. were the dictionaries of early English printers and booksellers, which with this edition extends the account through 1775.  This is the fourth in a series of dictionaries covering the period from 1557; (1) A dictionary of printers and booksellers in England, Scotland and Ireland ... 1557-1640, edited by R.B. McKerrow. 1910. (2) 1641-1667, by H.R. Plomer. 1907. (3) 1608-1725, by H.R. Plomer. 1922.
The organization of the dictionary is alphabetical by subject. Dates for publishing activity are provided, as are associations with other printers and publishers, such as employment history and apprenticeship.  The Dictionary also provides short biographical sketches based on available information. Contains circa 3000 individuals active in the trade during the period.

Poggendorff, J.C. BIOGRAPHISCH-LITERARISCHES HANDWORTERBUCH ZUR GESCHICHTE DER EXACTEN WISSENSCHAFTEN.  VOLS. I + II.  $175. 00

8vo. Two vols. 1584; 1468 cols. Leipzig, 1863. ISBN 1-888262-85-0.

A major source of bio-bibliographical information, these volumes provide skeleton biographical information & bibliographies, including information regarding articles published in journals. Many of the entries are concerned with scientists otherwise not mentioned in specialized or national dictionaries or biographies covers period before 1858.

Poggendorff, J.C. BIOGRAPHISCH-LITERARISCHES HANDWORTERBUCH ZUR GESCHICHTE DER EXACTEN WISSENSCHAFTEN VOLUME 5….1904-1922.    $225. 00

Cloth. Two volumes in One. Quarto. [iii], 696’ [iii] 697-1423.  Berlin:  1925-1926

Volume Five of Poggendorff’s standard work on scientists and their work is important for the numerous scientific discoveries that took place within the period covered, 1904-1922.  Einstein’s and Planck’s works are covered, as is the work of most of the early scientists working on atomic theory. Poggendorff’s work covers scientists of all nations.  About 6200 entries for individual scientists, each providing academic curriculum, inventions, and membership in learned societies, cover all scientists of note working during this period. The bio-bibliographical information provided covers about 70,000 printed items, making this one of the most comprehensive works of its kind.  Included in volume 5 is an addendum to volumes 1-4.  Volumes 1-4 are also available in reprint form from Martino Fine Books. Besterman 5638.

Poggendorff, J.C. BIOGRAPHISCH-LITERARISCHES HANDWORTERBUCH VOL III + IV. ZUR GESCHICHTE DER EXACTEN WISSENSCHAFTEN.  $295. 00

Cloth, 8vo. Two Vols.  bound in four xi, 846; [ii], 650; xiii, 930; [ii], 788 pp. Leipzig: Joh. Ambrosius Barth, 1898- 1904. ISBN 1-57898-043-7.

Poggendorff’s bio-bibliographical history of the exact sciences remains the standard and indispensable work for information about the life and works of mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, chemists, mineralogist, geologists, and other scientists of all nations. These are volume 3+4 of this series, covering the period 1858-1904. 

Pollak, Martha. THE MARK J. MILLARD ARCHITECTURAL COLLECTION:  ITALIAN AND SPANISH BOOKS, FIFTEENTH THROUGH NINETEENTH CENTURIES.  $80. 00

  Cloth. Large Quarto.  xxii, 545 pages.  Profusely Illustrated. Dust Jacket.  New York:  Braziller, 2000.           

The Italian books in the Millard collection constitute a significant segment of the architectural, archaeological, and topographical imprints published between 1486 and 1848 in various Italian cities; also included is a sampling of Spanish books, published between 1671 and 1800. Included in this final volume of the Mark Millard Library are books illustrating Vitruvius’ ancient Rome, Leon Battista Alberti’s Renaissance Florence, and Andrea Palladio’s pre-baroque Venice. Also prominent are views of modern Rome by Michelangelo, Francesco Borromini, Carlo Fontana, and Antonio da Sangallo, superb examples of various projects for Saint Peter’s Basilica, and the works by Sebastiano Serlio and Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola. A highlight of the catalogue is an essay covering the approximately thirty books in the Gallery’s collection by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The annotations are scholarly and very thorough.  Important historical introductions and biographies are provided for each artist.  This fourth volume completes the set of four that comprise the full catalogue of the Mark Millard Architectural Library.

Pollard, Alfred. SHAKESPEARE FOLIOS AND QUARTOS: A STUDY IN THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS, 1594-1685. $70.00

Cloth. Quarto. vii.176. Illustrated. London: Methuen and Company, 1909
The first Shakespeare play to be published (Titus Andronicus, 1594) was printed by a notorious pirate, John Danter, who also brought out, anonymously, a defective Romeo and Juliet (1597), largely from shorthand notes made during performance. Eighteen of Shakespeare's plays were printed in quartos both "good" and "bad" before the First Folio was published in 1623. The bad quartos are defective editions, usually with badly garbled or missing text.
For the First Folio, a large undertaking of more than 900 pages, a syndicate of five men was formed, headed by Edward Blount and William Jaggard. The actors John Heminge and Henry Condell undertook the collection of 36 of Shakespeare's plays, and about 1,000 copies of the First Folio were printed, none too well, by Jaggard's son, Isaac.
In 1632 a second folio was issued and in 1663 a third. The second printing (1664) of the latter included Pericles (which otherwise exists only in a bad quarto) and several other plays of dubious attribution. In 1685 the fourth and final folio was published. Pollard's work is painstaking study of the earliest editions of Shakespeare's plays, from the point of view of one of the outstanding Shakespearean scholars of the 20th century. Among the subjects considered are: the validity of variant readings in the Folios and Quartos, the reliability of the early texts, editorial changes, sources, and the pirated editions of many of the plays.
Included are exhaustive collations for each of the works cited. Remains a basic work to this day. Besterman 5715.

Pollard, Alfred W. RECORDS OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE: THE DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE TRANSLATION AND PUBLICATION OF THE BIBLE IN ENGLISH, 1525-1611. $35.00

Cloth. Oversized Octavo. xii, 387pp. Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press, 1911

This very scarce book is a collection of original documents relating to the making, printing and publishing of the English translations of the Bible, from Tyndale's New Testament of 1525 to the appearance of the version of 1611.
Pollard has gathered documents on price and copyright of early Bibles, confiscated Bibles, the search for heretical texts, Royal Proclamations concerning the Bible, the printing of the First New Testaments, as well as many other documents.
There is much of bibliographical value, including a short introductory essay by Pollard. This title is a basic document in the field, and a primary source material for the history of Bible printing in England. Though once reprinted, it is very difficult to find in any edition.

Pollard, Alfred (Catalogued by).  CATALOGUE  OF THE  BOOKS  MOSTLY  FROM  THE  PRESSES  OF THE  FIRST  PRINTERS  SHOWING THE PROGRESS OF PRINTING WITH  MOVABLE  METAL TYPES THROUGH  THE  SECOND HALF OF THE FIFTEENTH  CENTURY.   $75. 00

Cloth, Octavo. Illustrated frontispiece, pp xxxv. 339+19.Oxford: for Rush Hawkins, 1910.

 Hawkins acquired 540 books that illustrated the beginnings of printing in the different countries and cities of Europe.  Hawkins was able to acquire specimens of the work of the first printers in every important city, and in many of the smaller places also. For each title Pollard provides full and complete collations. Pollard not only thoroughly describes the 540 books in the collection; he also provides an invaluable introduction to the life and work of each of the printers. We are given extensive biographical information concerning the life and work of each of the first printers. In all, approximately 60 of the first printers are discussed in considerable detail.  Besterman 5077.

Pollard, Alfred W. LISTS OF CATALOGUES OF ENGLISH BOOK SALES 1676-1900 NOW IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALFRED W. POLLARD.  $90. 00

8vo. xvi, 523 pp. Cloth. London, 1915. Reprint 1995. ISBN 1-888262-59-1.

The collection of nearly 8000 catalogues of English book sales in the British Library ranges from the first sale of books by auction in 1676 to the end of the 19th century. The style of the entries is chronological. An extensive author index is also provided.

Powicke, Frederick James. The Cambridge Platonists.$45.00

Hardbound. Octavo.English. x, 219 p. front., plates, ports. London, Toronto, J.M. Dent, 1926.

The Cambridge Platonists were a group of philosophers at Cambridge University, England in the middle of the 17th century (between 1633 and 1688). The Cambridge Platonists were reacting to two pressures. On the one hand, the dogmatism of the Puritan divines, with their anti-rationalist demands, were, they felt, immoral and incorrect. They also felt that the Puritan/Calvinist insistence upon individual revelation left God uninvolved with the majority of mankind. At the same time, they were reacting against the materialist writings of René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes. They felt that the latter, while properly rationalist, were denying the idealistic nature of the universe. To the Cambridge Platonists, religion and reason were in harmony, and reality was comprised not of sensation, but of "intelligible forms" that exist behind perception. Universal, ideal forms (a la Plato) inform matter, and the senses are unreliable guides to reality. As divines and in matters of polity, the Cambridge Platonists argued for moderation. They believed that reason is the proper judge of all disagreements, and so they advocated dialogue between the Puritans and the High Churchmen. They had a mystical understanding of reason, believing that reason is not merely the sense-making facility of the mind, but, instead, "the candle of the Lord" - an echo of the divine within the human soul and an imprint of God within man. Thus, they believed that reason could lead beyond the sensory, because it is semi-divine. Reason was, for them, of God, and thus capable of nearing God. Therefore, they believed that reason could allow for judging the private revelations of Puritan theology and the proper investigation of the rituals and liturgy of the Established Church. For this reason, they were called latitudinarians. Representatives: Ralph Cudworth (1617 - 1688), Nathaniel Culverwel (1619-1651), Henry More (1614 - 1687), John Smith (1618 - 1652), Benjamin Whichcote (1609 - 1683). Bookseller Inventory # 1253

Pratt, Ida A. and Gottheil, Richard James Horatio. MODERN EGYPT A LIST OF REFERENCES TO MATERIAL IN THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY. $60.00
Cloth. Oversized Octavo. 320 pages. New York: New York Public Library, 1929
Pratt's compilation is based on the very extensive collection formed by the New York Public Library. Chapters include:
Bibliography/ Description and Travel/ Nile River / Suez Canal/ Napoleonic Expedition/ Courts of Law/ Army and Navy/ Nubia/ Sudan/ Science/ Magic & Superstitions/ Law.
In all 6000 items are described, making this one of the most extensive listings in Besterman. Though once reprinted, no copies are currently in print. Besterman 1919.

Pratt, Ida. ARMENIA AND THE ARMENIANS: A LIST OF REFERENCES IN THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY.   $50. 00

Pratt, Ida A.   LIST OF WORKS IN THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY RELATING TO PERSIA.  $50.00      

 Cloth, Octavo.  vi.151. New York:  The New York Public Library, 1915.

The Persian Collection in the New York Public Library includes books on all aspects of Persian life.  There are sections on archaeology, travel, geography, history, social life, literature and religion.  There is even a section on the history of the Jews in Persian. In all about 2750 printed items are described, making this one of the most comprehensive bibliographies listed in Besterman.  This title is quite difficult to find, and to our knowledge has not been reprinted previously.  There is a useful index to help navigate through the material.  Besterman 3170.

Prideaux, Col. W.F. C.S.I.  A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. $65. 00

Cloth, Octavo. pp.viii.401. London: F. Hollings, 1917.

Stevenson, a Scottish novelist, essayist, and a poet (1850-1894) was one of the most popular and highly regarded British writers of the end of the 19th century. This revised and expanded edition describes 600 books written by Stevenson. The detail also includes contents, description of states, and bindings, and much other relevant publishing information. Besterman 5911. 

Prime, George Wendell. FIFTEENTH CENTURY BIBLES A STUDY IN BIBLIOGRAPHY. $40.00

Cloth. Octavo. pp.95.viii. New York: Anson D.F. Randolph and Company, [1888].

The Bible is the first complete book published with movable type. It is the first book in number of editions, copies and translations. Prime devotes his entire energy following the spread of bible printings during the fifteen- century in Europe.
This classic work examines the early printing of the bible from several aspects. Various chapters are devoted to manuscripts in the 15th century, to the Gutenberg Bible, block books, the Mentz Psalter, the Hamberg Bible, the Mentelin or Strasburg Bible, the first dated Bible [1462], Latin Bibles from 1462-1471, Latin Bibles from 1471-1480, Vernacular Bibles and other topics. Though reprinted in the past, no edition of this title is currently in print. Besterman 758.

Pritzel, G.A. THESAURUS OF BOTANICAL LITERATURE. THESAURUS LITERATURAE BOTANICAE OMNIUM GENTIUM. $95.

4to. viii, 576pp. Cloth. Leipsig: Brockhaus,1872-1877. Reprint 1995. ISBN 1-888262-60-5.

A mainstay in any library of botanical literature. Pritzel’s Thesaurus of Botanical Literature “remains the single most useful answer book for tracing a botanical title before 1870 ... The chronological topical indices provide a reference list of short titles not easily picked up elsewhere”. Lubrecht, Early American Botany, p. 55.

Proctor, Robert (1868-1904).  AN INDEX TO THE   EARLY PRINTED BOOKS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM FROM THE   INVENTION  OF  PRINTING  TO  THE  YEAR MDC.  $100. 00

 Cloth. Octavo.pp.[ii].530+533-908. Plus supplements for 1899, 1900, 1901, 1902. Plus register of the four supplements by Konrad Burger. Privately printed.

“A pupil of Henry Bradshaw, Proctor elevated the classification of fifteenth-century printing types into a vast and comprehensive system, introducing a standard for measuring them and describing their characteristics in a succinct way. Only short titles of the books are given, with indication of their types, grouped in chronological order of appearance under their printers of whose fonts a list is provided; the printers are grouped under the place in which they worked in chronological order of their first appearances there, and the printing places are, within their countries, arranged in the order of first occurrence of printings in each. ”-Breslauer & Folter 139.  Besterman 5054.  

Proctor, Robert. THE PRINTING OF GREEK IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. $75.00

Octavo. 217 pages.  [Oxford] Printed for the Bibliographical society at the Oxford university press, 1900

“Any study of early Greek typography must begin with the seminal work of Robert Proctor, The Printing of Greek in the Fifteenth Century, in which he painstakingly charted the various courses by which the earliest printers of Greek attempted to solve the many problems inherent in stilling mobile Greek script into fixed metal type.  In addition to the basic problem of how to print accents and breathings which appear on almost every Greek word, the contemporary Greek script as written by the scores of Greek exiles from the recently devastated Byzantine Empire was characterized by an extravagance of complicated an convoluted ligatures, abbreviations and contractions.  The first Greek press in Venice [1486], for example, attempting to imitate contemporary scribal practice, possessed a fount of over 1,350 separate sorts.”  Review by Kenneth Snipes, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), pp. 120-122.

Proskouriakoff, Tatiana. A Study of Classic Maya Sculpture. $ 75.00

Quarto. English Book xi, 209 p. illus., maps (1 fold.). Carnegie Institute, Washington D.C., 1950. Classic Maya sculpture was the finest developed in the native New World. Much of it occurs on monuments which are also dated by the elaborate and precise "Long Count." Whatever the correlation of Maya with Christian calendar may have been, the relative time intervalbetween the execution of particular Maya sculptures is accordingly known, provided their inscribed dates remain legible. We have therefore for the Maya an almost unparalleled example of an ancient sculpture that went on for five to six centuries with a large proportion of its products exactly dated, a situation, as it were, made to order for the historian and theoretician of art development. Tatiana Proskouriakoff was a sculptress in her own right first, and learned about the Maya later, inher many years with the Carnegie Institution. Her book is as valuable and important as one might hope it to be. Anything Maya is notoriously complex, and Miss Proskouriakoff's dissection is so searching as to cut very fine. Basically, this is nota chronological or calendrical investigation but a highly documented study of the history of a great art.

Przhevalsky, Nikolai Mikhailovich & Morgan, E Delmar & Yule, Henry.       
Mongolia, the Tangut Country, And The Solitudes Of Northern Tibet, Being a Narrative Of Three Years' Travel In Eastern High Asia. $110.00

Octavo.  Two Volumes in One.  Includes the large color map missing in other reprint editions. Hardcover.  772 pages, illus., plates, large folding color map. London, S. Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1876

Nikolai Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky [1839—1888), was a Russian geographer and explorer of Central and Eastern Asia. Although he never reached his final goal, Lhasa in Tibet, he traveled through regions unknown to the west, such as northern Tibet, modern Qinghai and Dzungaria. He significantly contributed to European knowledge on Central Asia and was the first known European to describe the only extant species of wild horse. In the following years he made four journeys to Central Asia:
    * 1870–1873 from Kyakhta he crossed the Gobi desert to Peking, then exploring the upper Yangtze (Chang Jiang), and in 1872 crossing into Tibet. He surveyed over 7,000 square miles, collected and brought back with him 5,000 plant, 1000 bird, and 3,000 insect species, as well as 70 reptiles and the skins of 130 different mammals.[3]
    * 1876–1877 travelling through Eastern Turkestan he visited what he believed to be lake Lop Nor, which had reportedly not been visited by any European since Marco Polo. [4]
    * 1879–1880 via Hami and through the Qaidam basin to lake Koko Nor. Then over the Tian Shan mountains into Tibet to within 260 km of Lhasa before being turned back by Tibetan officials;
    * 1883–1885 from Kyakhta across the Gobi to Alashan and the eastern Tian Shan mountains, turning back at the Yangtze. Then back to Koko Nor, and westwards to Khotan and Lake Issyk Kul.
            The results of these expanded journeys opened a new era for the study of geography in Europe as well as the studies of the fauna and flora of this area that was relatively unknown to his Western contemporaries. Among other things, he reported on the wild population of Bactrian Camels as well as the Przewalski's Horse and Przewalski's Gazelle named after him in many European languages. Przhevalsky's writings include Mongolia, the Tangut Country (1875) and From Kulja, Across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879)

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