Copy Books, Six, 19th Century, British and American.

Description:

Copy Books, Six, 19th Century, British and American.
Four copy books commercially produced by printers, with printed covers, all single signature quarto: London: Edward Langley, [n.d.], cover printed with an oval woodcut showing monkeys running a barber shop, printed within a type ornament border, eighteen leaves, inscribed with a prose text manuscript, a school assignment on Cato, final leaf with penmanship exercises, 7 1/4 x 6 in.; another with pink covers, and blue text leaves, Boston: B.B. Mussey & Co., [n.d.], with an elaborately printed cover depicting Clio and a knight with a short story about greatness using the metaphor of cutting a quill well with one's sword, back cover with publisher's advertisement, filled with Joseph Lovrien's of Springfield penmanship exercises, ten leaves, one half torn away, other leaves removed, 8 x 6 3/4 in.; Foster's Elementary Copy-Books, Boston: Perkins, Marvin, & Col, 1835, covers printed inside and out, front and back, with penmanship instructions, each page printed at the top with a white-on-black writing example (an inspirational/moralistic phrase) and blank lines beneath (filled in by hand in this copy),in the first half, the examples are larger, sixteen leaves, 8 x 6 1/2 in.; American Writing Book, Boston: Reynolds & Col, [c. 1854], front cover with a scene of the Arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts, small woodcut portraits of James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren in the four corners, all within a type ornament border, the back cover with a multiplication table and small publisher's ad, text leaves blue, inscribed throughout with poetry in the hand of Helen Putnam of Hampstead, New Hampshire, who was thirteen years old in 1854, 7 3/4 x 6 3/4 in.; another with an engraving on the front cover titled, "Copy of an Antique painting found in the Ruins of Herculaneum," blue text leaves inscribed by Mary Rand, filled with penmanship exercises, eighteen leaves, signature of Polly Rand also appears, 6 1/4 x 7 1/2 in. [and] another in plain brownish pink wrappers, lined paper within, completed by Charles Pollard Hartwell of Littleton, Massachusetts and Hopkinton, New Hampshire, 20 October, 1842, twenty-four leaves, with rather accomplished exercises in penmanship, including a section at the end of sample letters and receipts, 8 3/4 x 7 in. (6)
Estimate $200-300


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