1801. 8vo, pp. 240; small paper flaw at head of p. 26, and in centore of p. 35 (touching a couple of letters), some sporadic light marginal dampstaining, with some occasional spotting and browning; uncut and a wide-margined copy, in contemporary red long-grained half-morocco over marbled boards, spine in compartments with raised bands, decorated and lettered in gilt, retaining original silk marker, head and tail of spine lightly rubbed, with two small nicks along upper joint, extremities lightly rubbed, corners slightly worn; an attractive copy. Uncommon first edition, and an attractive copy, of this curious contribution to the corpus of post revolutionary literature discussing the need for a social regeneration and rehabilitation in France, and how best to achieve this, discussing the problem in relation to eugenics and physiognomy. As such, it is an early and pioneering text in the modern eugenics movement in France.
Prior to 1789 many Enlightenment commentators, both medical and political, had sought to provide a biological explanation for the nation's social decline and degeneration, laying the blame on the natural sensibility of women and their predisposition towards hysteria and nervous disease. This view of the 'disorderly woman' ran as an idée fixe through many medical texts of the period, her rehabilitation vital to reform domestic behaviour, health, hygiene and restore national harmony. The debate continued long-after the Revolution, with notable contributions from such authors as Cabanis, Moreau de la Sarthe, Bichat, and Boyveau Laffecteur. Indeed for some, the problem had merely been exacerbated by the Revolution, women gaining greater freedom, as epitomized by the Parisian socialites Mme Tallien and Juliette Récamier, which led not to regeneration, but rather further maternal degeneration. The need to instil domestic virtues amongst the citizenry once again resumed importance therefore, and spurned a literary genre of texts on 'the natural history of women' and feminine rehabilitation.
Louis Joseph Robert ‘le jeune’ here approaches the problem from a slightly different angle, and as such pens an early treatise on eugenics and the inheritance of intelligence, almost seventy years before Galton’s great classic of 1869, Hereditary Genius. The work presents his system which aimed to teach 'l'art de faire des enfans d'esprit, qui deviennent de grands-hommes'. Unlike other works which were addressed to parents and mothers, Robert firmly directs his attention towards government and the L’Institut de France, as he expounds his plan to create a society composed of an intellectual elite. Inspired by earlier writers on the issues of heredity such as Harvey, Bonnet, Cuvier and Maupertuis, as well as the physiognomists Lavater and Camper, he suggests that two primary schools or Athaeneum be established, for each sex, to create model citizens. ‘Using basic physiognomic knowledge, the Ministry of the Interior would place promising children in the schools at the age of seven, and there they should remain until a national jury declared their education complete... finally, at the annual Festival of the Republic, the First Consul (Napoleon) would confer a national award upon the six most distinguished male and female students of the Athénée; and the youngsters would then celebrate their ‘mega-anthropogenetic’ marriages with all the dignity accorded to good republican citizens’ (Quinlan, p. 158).
‘Robert adapts his view of conjugal hygiene to the political goal of forming the “new man” of the post-Revolutionary period... on a larger scale, it provides a blueprint for reshaping the physiognomies of the French nation by forming the ideal citizen according to medical hygienic principles’ (Winston, From perfectibility to perversion: meliorism in 18th c. France, p. 150).
A second expanded edition was published in 1803, suggesting that his ideas and systems, if not eventually enduring, clearly found a ready audience at the time, and indeed provoked much debate. Mégalantropogénesie became the focus of a satirical vaudeville play penned by Barré and Radet, who envisaged a world full of vain and useless aesthetes, eventually saved by a young girl marrying a practical sailor. His work provides an historical view of existing theories on heredity at the turn of nineteenth century, whilst also looking forward to the far-reaching and pioneering work of such men as Quetelet in his detailed statistical investigation on the development of the physical and intellectual qualities of man, ‘Sur l'home et le development de ses facultés’,of 1835, and culminating in Galton's classic of natural science.

-1870s.]. 8vo, carte de visite photograph album, ff. 15 leaves of thick card, with images on both recto and verso, and comprising a lithograph introductory text within a garland border, followed by 28 numbered albumen print photographs of comical drawings, also within matching garland borders, each with lithographed text mounted below, the ‘windows for each surrounded by chromolithograph triple gilt ruled border; somewhat dust-soiled throughout with some marginal staining, first window previously torn but now repaired, the photographs all a little faded, more so towards the end, top corners of each card clipped for easier insertion into windows, small tear at tail of ff. 2, with further light wear and occasional minor tears to each, and cards a little awkward to remove; bound within the original elaborate blindstamped red morocco album, though now considerably darkened appearing almost brown, upper cover lettered in gilt 'The Club Adventures of Alderman Akeinside', sympathetically newly rebacked to style with new endpapers and later morocco label, spine with raised bands, all edges gilt and with inner gilt dentelles, with remains of brass clasps; a most unusual and appealing ephemeral item. A wonderful and somewhat curious piece of mid to late Victoriana, and seemingly a rare production. We have so far been unable to find any record of ‘B & Co. London (Wholesale), and have only found two copies held by Institutions, and none in the UK.
Presented as a carte de visite photograph album, the work contains 29 ‘cartes’, the first of which is a lithograph introductory text, followed by 28 numbered albumen print photographs of comical drawings illustrating the gluttonous night-out of Alderman Akeinside at his club, his inebriated return home, and his final consultation with Dr. Sloe and Mrs. Akeinside. Though slightly hard to remove from their ‘windows’ (each framed by a gilt ruled border), each card has the imprint 'Published by B. & Co. London (Wholesale)', within a circle on the verso, though undated. Harvard hold what is presumably the original manuscript version, and which they date to 1850, and which contains ‘pen, pencil and watercolour’ drawings, each signed ‘GB’ or ‘GBR’. Toronto holds a copy of the present later version including the albumen carte-de-visite prints, most probably photographs of the original album held at the Houghton, and which they date to 1860.
From the Introduction: 'August ye 12th. 18-- Dine at the Club tomorrow ? Of course I shall, whoever heard of such a thing ? Mrs. A. wont eat turtle, never did: I dont like Ice: because I once fell into the Serpentine: no wonder she dont know the difference between Turtle and boiled Goose!! Some people dont know the difference between a sheeps head and a Carrot!'.

1825. Two volumes, 8vo; pp. xii, 302, [4]; pp. 260; with three folding engraved plates; both volumes somewhat foxed and browned throughout, with some occasional faint dampstaining; evidence of previous book-plates on both inside boards, and of ex-libris/book-seller notes on first front endpaper, now erased, with subsequent later price markings; bound in blue card boards over the original printed paper spine, boards seemingly near contemporary but with later endpapers, head and tail of spines chipped and worn with loss, spines a little faded, covers a little stained and soiled, and overall slightly dog-eared, but otherwise good. A scarce later edition of Scarpa’s famous surgical treatise on the diseases of the eye, first published in 1801 and considered the first textbook of ophthalmology in Italian. The work was to establish Scarpa’s reputation as a leading authority on the subject, and was to go through several editions and translations, notably into French in 1821, by Europe’s first Black physician, François Fournier-Pescay (1771-1833) and Louis Jacques Bégin (1793-1859). That translation included a number of additions by Fournier-Pescay and Bégin, which were clearly considered to be of sufficient importance and relevance that they have here been translated back into Italian, and published in this new edition.
‘It contains the first description of the operation of iridodialysis, and significant chapters on cataract, staphyloma and diseases of the vessels in the eye. Like most of Scarpa’s works... [it] is illustrated with the author’s own superbly executed drawings. “[Scarpa] himself trained the famous Faustino Anderloni to become the engraver of his illustrations... His anatomic prints are therefore models of anatomic representation as regards faithful differentation of the tissues, correctness of form, and the utmost perfection of engraving” (Choulant, p. 298)’ (Norman, 1899).
Fournier was the son of Adélaïde Rappau, a ‘mulâtress libre’ and the plantation owner François de Pescay of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). By the time of his birth, they had returned to France and settled in Bordeaux, at the time a diverse city accustomed to biracial immigrants, mainly from the French West Indies. ‘Unlike in the colonies, there were few laws impeding upward mobility of “persons of color” (les personnes des couleur), thus Fournier benefited from an excellent education in Paris followed by medical training in Bordeaux. Swept up in the upheaval of the French Revolution, twenty-one-year-old Fournier, along with his brothers Jacques Philippe and Louis Georges, joined the army in 1792. During his service as an army surgeon (chirugien aide-major), he demonstrated extraordinary scientific ability by becoming the first Frenchman to duplicate Englishman Adair Crawford’s experiments with barium chloride in the treatment of tuberculosis which he later published. He left the military in 1799 to practice medicine in Brussels, Belgium, where he co-founded the city’s medical society, Société de Médecine de Bruxelles, and served as its first secretary-general, recording volumes of proceedings. In 1803 he founded the arts and sciences journal Le nouvel spirit des journaux and later published an eighty-six-page treatise on tetanus which was lauded by the Medical Society of Paris. Moving from Brussels to Strasbourg, France, he became professeur-directeur at the École Spéciale de Médecine de Strasbourg.’(Robert Fikes on https://blackpast.org). He was to return to Haiti in 1823 and under the regime of Jean-Pierre Boyer, Fournier was appointed Inspector General of the Health Department and Director of Haiti’s first university (L'Académie d'Haïti). ‘It is simply a fact that no other physician of African descent was able to accomplish as much during the 18th and 19th centuries, or probably any time prior to the onset of the Industrial Revolution.’ (Fikes, p. 683).
Previous editions contained four plates, but only three have been included here.

1898. 8vo; pp. viii, 576; with some 200 text illustrations and half-tones, and numerous tables within text; browned throughout due to paper quality, more prominently so around margins; with some occasional minor marginal nicks; in contemporary red roan backed marbled boards, spine ruled in black and lettered in gilt, tail of spine nicked with small loss, joints somewhat rubbed, with some scraping and scuffing to roan, with light scuffing and rubbing to surfaces, extremities lightly worn, more prominent along tail of upper cover. Fourth and expanded edition (first 1882) of this detailed account and analysis of both the French transport system, together with a comparison of other systems across the world. Originally the work of Ferdinand Sérafon, ‘Ingénieur civil, ancien Directeur des Tramways de Lille, ancien Ingénieur en chef d’une Société de Chemins de fer sur routes’ (first edition title-page), this later edition is ascribed to ‘E. Serafon’ (but from the preface clearly the original author so perhaps an typo), with revisions by H. de Graffigny ‘Ingénieur Civil Directeur de la Petite Encyclopédie électro-mécanique’, and J. B. Dumas ‘Conductuer principal au service municipal des travaux de Paris, en retraite’. Henri de Graffigny, the pseudonym of Raoul Henri Clément Marquis (1863-1934), was a hugely successful popular scientific writer on a myriad of topics, and indeed a short list of his publications is included on the title-page verso.
By the 1870s it was becoming clear that Paris needed a public transport system other than the existing omnibus and tramway services. London already had a network of inner city and suburban railways, notably the shallow underground lines, and the US had seen the development of effective street railroad or tramway networks. A keen student of international advancement, Ferdinand Sérafon had already published two comprehensive studies on the subject, highlighting in particular developments in London in Étude sur les chemins de fer, les tramways et les moyens de transport en commun à Paris et à Londres (1872), and with a wider survey undertaken in Manuel Pratique de la construction des chemins de fer des rues (1877), but noting US developments. The present work was clearly a continuation upon those themes, Sérafon a fervent exponent of tramways, and leading the charge to adopt old road routes for new railway lines, as a cost effective method. The work compares and contrasts systems employed in Britain, the US, as well as other parts of Europe. Attractively illustrated, it includes a wealth of technical information on all areas of construction and exploitation, and provides a fascinating insight into the rapid growth of public transport systems at the end of the 19th century.

1857. 8vo, pp. 77, [ii]; with large folding engraved frontispiece, and six further engraved plates (two folding); two small repairs to verso of frontispiece with a couple of small tears at folds but without significant loss, outer margin of title-page a little nicked and chipped, with slight loss to upper corner of first three leaves, further light marginal soiling and occasional spotting; with bookseller’s label at tail of front paste-down; in later three-quarter cloth over plain boards, spine lettered in gilt, front hinge cracked but holding, covers a little soiled, with slight sunning at tail of upper cover, extremities and corners a little rubbed and bumped; a good copy. A scarce abridged account of this noted Scottish trial, no doubt published to satisfy the voracious public interest that the notorious case had generated throughout Great Britain. The large folding and evocative frontispiece depicts the court-room, with the defendant standing with her head bowed, and facing away from the viewer. Portraits of Smith and the leading lawyers are also depicted, together with a view of both her house, and that of the victim, Pierre Emile L’Angelier.
Smith, the twenty-one year old daughter of the noted Glasgow architect David Hamilton, was tried for poisoning Pierre Emile L'Angelier, a poor Jerseyman of French extraction, in the summer of 1857. The pair had met in 1855 and began a secret correspondence that eventually resulted in a full-blown love affair. In the spring of 1857, Smith became engaged to William Minnoch, a suitor acceptable to her parents, and tried to end her relationship with L'Angelier. Insisting that their prior intimacy meant they were married in the eyes of God, L'Angelier refused to accept Smith's decision. After threatening to send her letters to her father if she went ahead with the marriage plans, he died suddenly on March 22, 1857. A post-mortem examination revealed that death had been caused by arsenic poisoning, and a search of L'Angelier's rooms turned up the letters Smith had written to him. Smith was arrested and charged with murder and two counts of attempted murder, based on reports of earlier attacks of a "mysterious" stomach ailment. Despite the evidence of the letters and the fact that Smith was shown to have purchased arsenic several times, the jury acquitted her of attempted murder and brought in a verdict of Not Proven on the final charge. It is interesting to note that for the London readership, Vickers has included a brief explanation of this verdict - specific to Scottish law.
OCLC notes a more full explanation of the trial published in the same year, with a Belfast imprint and comprising 124 pages, as well as a shorter version of 40 pp with a Melbourne imprint. The trial prompted several subsequent commentaries and analyses.

1917.]. Oblong 8vo, 174 x 276mm; ff. [8] leaves of postcards in lithograph, four per page, separated by perforations, thus 32 in all, of which 16 are printed in full colour, and 16 are duplicates in outline ready to be coloured in; central leaf detached; very minor rusting to central gutter from staple, aside from some occasional light soiling, and minor offsetting from colour, quite fresh and bright; stapled as issued in the original decorative card wrappers, staple rusted, covers somewhat soiled and lightly scuffed, with some minor staining, a couple of small marginal tears, corners a little bumped and furled; still a very good copy of a scarce ephemeral item. A scarce and unusual W.W.I ephemeral survivor - a rare postcard colouring book showing the street trades and inhabitants of the port of Salonika (now Thessaloniki). Unused and seemingly complete, the booklet is a fine example of the mass market for postcards which developed as a direct consequence of the war, booksellers quickly responding to the demand from soldiers far from home, for cheap and lightweight souvenir cards. Extraordinary efforts were made to keep the flow of mail to the troops at the front, and, in return, to Britain, France, Italy and further afield. Postcards were to become a vital form of communication, an easy way to show and tell families about where they were and what life was like. Popular with the military authorities as well, being easy to censor, a mass market soon developed, booksellers and publishers printing and selling hundreds of thousands of cards, with a vast array of subject matters depicted, frequently scenic, sometimes capturing camp and military life or, as here, more light-hearted.
Of the 32 cards, 16 are vibrantly coloured, with the remaining 16 reproduced in outline ready for colouring - a gentle distraction no doubt. One can only imagine that crayons and paints would be in short supply in the field, but a note on the verso of the current booklet helpful notes ‘'For colouring use the non-poisonous colours of Bourgeois Ainé’. Very much of the time, and thus somewhat stereotyped, amongst the street trades depicted we find crossing-sweepers, musicians, money-changers, grinders, confectioners, ‘schoemakers’ (sic), a photographer, a tailor, a milkman, a lemonade vendor, a barber and a fishmonger. They brightly convey to those back home the sense of ‘other worldliness’ of life in Salonika, and would in all probability amaze, amuse, hopefully reassure, and no doubt be treasured, by the recipient, something to be held dear until their return.
Included amongst the Allied Forces, as is well known, were several authors, poets, artists and cartoonists, and some of these artists went on to contribute series of cartoons for postcards. Whilst some of these serving, military, artists remain anonymous, the present series, according to Diana Wardle in her chapter ‘Write Home Salonika’, is the work of the lithographer Jacques Touchet (1887-1949), the series also being published in French as ‘Les petits metiers a Salonique’. Wardle suggests that, as here, the series was made up of 16 ‘trades’, and notes further that ‘a double spread of his work was published in L’Illustration in February 1917. After the war, Touchet provided a series of his caricatures of Salonica ‘types’ for the benefit of l’Union de Femmes de France’ (p. 244 in Archaeology Behind the Battle Lines. The Macedonian Campaign (1915-19) and its Legacy edited by Andrew Shapland and Evangelia Stefani).

1880s?. Oblong small 8vo, ff. 40 leaves of chromolithograph plates; some very light marginal browning and foxing; in contemporary navy and light blue cloth backed boards, upper cover lettered in gilt, spine lightly sunned, covers a little stained and soiled. A scarce and beautifully illustrated late Victorian trade catalogue, issued by the Kent based coach building company W. P. Love, with forty chromolithograph illustrations of horse-drawn coaches and carts, and showing a variety of commercial, utility and multi-passenger vehicles, some of which include oil-lamps. A wonderful catalogue, the images ‘transport’ us back to a bygone era of horse-drawn travel - the ultimate green form of transportation.
Despite living only 15 miles from Paddock Wood, we have sadly been unable to find out any further information about W. P. Love, though believe that they remained in operation on Commercial Road until the late 20th century.

1883.]. Large 4to, pp. [22], comprised of six pages of text, the first and last as paste-downs to covers, together with 6 full-page chromolithograph illustrations by Kronheim & Co., all mounted on linen and printed on one side only, bound so description and illustration face each other; some light browning, and minor offsetting onto text, but otherwise clean and bright; stitched as issued in the original pictorial covers, upper cover with chromolithograph image of a rhinoceros, with lettering in red and black, lower cover with a series of publisher’s advertisements, inner hinges a little exposed but holding firm, head and tail of spine a little worn, covers slightly soiled with some minor edgewear; contemporary inscription ‘For dear cousin Hannah. A more deluxe issue mounted on linen, of this vibrant work for children, although the date of publication is uncertain. Frederick Warne’s ‘Aunt Louisa’s London toy book’ series began in 1865, and as the advertisement on the present rear wrapper reveals, was to go on to include over 90 titles. Laura Valentine (née Jewry, 1814-1899), who used the pseudonym Aunt Louisa, was the general editor of Warne’s publishing house and contributed text and verses for many in the series. Their address is given as ‘Bedford Street, Strand’. The copy held at the Cotsen library appears to be another variant, including an additional American publisher of Scribner, Welford and Armstrong. Two other works in the series are noted on the rear cover, though eventually a further selection of animals was added to the series. The reader is here introduced to the giraffe, the hippopotamus, the Elk or Moose Deer, the rhinoceros, the reindeer, and finally the wild boar.
Toy Book number 44 had introduced the brown bear, elephant, leopard, dromedary, kangaroo, and the zebra. Number 46 focused upon hyaenas, the stag, the jaguar, the fox, the otter and the camel. The fourth part highlighted the lion, the tiger, the wolf, the polar bear, the orangoutang and the buffalo. Later editions seemingly abandon the text.

[n.d. but ca. 1858-60.]. Small folio, pp. [ii] additional chromolithograph title-page consisting of an oval-shaped decorative border with a small chromolithograph oval paper onlay illustrating a piece of silverware in the centre, [vi], [17]-48; with 17 chromolithograph plates (most retaining tissue guards), and with a number of wood engravings within text; some occasional light browning and soiling, but otherwise clean and bright; original morocco backed blue publisher’s cloth with bevelled edges, all edges gilt, rebacked, covers elaborately tooled and lettered in gilt, spine ruled and lettered in gilt; with book-plate on front paste-down, possibly Charles J Hart; ex-Birmingham Assay Office copy with their small stamp at tail of front free endpaper; a good copy. An attractive copy of this striking chromolithograph work illustrating examples of metal-work and jewellery which had been exhibited at the Art Treasures Exhibition held in Manchester in 1857. After contributing to the guidebooks for the Crystal Palace at Sydenham in 1854 (together with Matthew Digby Wyatt and others), the architect John Burley Waring (1823-1875) was appointed superintendent of ornamental art and sculpture for the Manchester exhibition, described by Elizabeth Pergam as ‘the first blockbuster’ exhibition. To celebrate the occasion, a large illustrated catalogue was issued under the title ‘Art treasures of the United Kingdom from the Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester’, describing many sculptural and decorative art highlights arranged in categories, with introductory essays by noted commentators, and illustrated with large-scale chromolithographs by, amongst others, the noted photographer and chromolithographer Francis Bedford (1815-1894).
The present ‘Examples of Metal-Work’ originally formed part of that more extensive catalogue, but has been here reissued separately with a new ‘Introduction’ by Waring (not included in the the 1858 publication). The essay by the architect and art historian Wyatt (1820-1877) are apparently the same sheets as those used previously, and includes small wood engravings by the illustrator Robert Dudley (1826-1909). Wyatt had previously published a more extensive illustrated work on the subject in 1852, ‘Metal-Work and its artistic design’, once again illustrated with numerous chromolithographs.

1840.]. 36mo, pp. 70, [2] publisher’s advertisements; with hand-coloured engraved frontispiece and three further uncoloured engraved plates; paper a little browned with some minor offsetting from plates, in the original printed embossed wrappers, all edges gilt, inner hinge cracked but holding, upper cover ruled and lettered in black though faded, covers a little soiled, and scuffed, with crease mark to front lower corner, extremities a little rubbed; with contemporary inscription on front free endpaper, ‘Charlotte Wills from her affectionate sister Bessie, March 1st, 1841’; an appealing copy. Second edition of this charming work for young children, first published in 1837. ‘In the eighteen-thirties the range of useful knowledge was considerably extended - even to include conchology. The author is no other than Samuel Clark (1810-1875), of Darton & Clark. He gave up publishing to be ordained, but continued to write as “The Rev. T. Wilson” (James, Children’s Books of Yesterday, p. 55). This was not his only pseudonym, Clark also writing under the pen name of “Peter Parley” and “Reuben Ramble”. A keen advocate of scientific education for the young, he wrote a number of works on subjects such as geology, minerals, geography, chemistry and the physical sciences. The Monthly Review called the work ‘a little gem’ and ‘one of the sweetest tiny volumes that was ever published’, with Tait’s Magazine describing it as ‘a nice sea-side book’.