Pictorial Views Of Massachusetts: For The Young. Worcester: Enos Dorr & Co., Publishers, Booksellers And Stationers, no date, but published circa 1853. The book is a history of Boston and its surrounding towns, in the early to mid 1800’s. The spine is worn away, the pictorial covers read “Pictorial Massachusetts” on the front and “Juvenile Books, Published By J.S. Wesby, Bookseller and Binder, Worcester, Mass.” on the back, with a list of books published by Wesby: the titles include “The Child’s Own Sunday Book, Pictures And Stories Of Birds, Pictures And Stories of Animals, The Child’s Book Of Poetry, and Pictorial Massachusetts, Views In Massachusetts”; with blank yellow endpapers, an inscription on the front free endpaper that reads “Best Regards F Swift Jr., 1926” and “Presented to Carrie E. Miller by her grandmother”, a frontis engraving of the capitol building in Boston, the seal of Massachusetts on the title page, a brief history of Boston, Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, the Old State House on State Street, the Franklin House (Ben Franklin’s home), a history of Sharon, South Boston, and Chelsea, Charlestown, Somerville, Roxbury, Dedham, Canton, Quincy, Randolph, Foxborough, Milton, Medway, and Medfield. Each town or village has a woodcut engraving to illustrate the place and two or three pages of text, and there are 88 pages of text altogether, including the engravings and illustrations.
The book is probably a first edition and measures 5 5/8 x 4 1/2 in. wide, the covers are detached, with light soiling and browning on some of the pages, age-wear, a couple of tears, and overall a readable copy that tells about the history of the towns and villages in Massachusetts in the 1820’s to 1840’s.
b) The Crooked & Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston 1630 - 1822 by Annie Haven Thwing, Boston, Marshall Jones Company MDCCCCXX [1920], Copyright 1920, with a paper label on the brown cover, blank endpapers, inscribed “A. M. Treat from Henry A. Day of Boston 1920”, the half title, a frontis engraving of Trinity Church, a two-page Preface, a Contents Page, a list of Illustrations which includes seven fold-out maps, 245 pages of text, and a thirty-five page Index, for a total of 282 pages altogether, and all the plates and maps are present.
This is a first edition taking readers on a tour of Boston's colonial and pre-industrial neighborhoods. (We know it’s a first edition because Bill McBride says all books printed by Marshall Jones which have just a single date and no other printings are first editions. See A Pocket Guide to the Identification of First Editions, Compiled by Bill McBride.)
Annie Haven Thwing (1851 - 1940), also known as A.H. Thwing or Anne Haven Thwing, was an American historian and children's author. Her popular book for children, Chicken Little, appeared in 1899 and retells the old story of a chicken who believes the sky is falling.
As an historian, Thwing compiled an enormous card index on subjects related to the history of Boston and donated the index to the Massachusetts Historical Society - the cards occupied seventy-four library drawers in the catalog room. She also created a three-dimensional model of Boston as it appeared in 1775, and the model now is on public display in the Old South Meeting House in Boston, and her book here about the Crooked & Narrow Streets of Boston reached the Boston Globe best-seller list.
The book is 8vo. and measures 9 5/8 x 6 3/8 in. wide, with clean maps and clean text, detached covers, the spine labels are gone, there's wear at the extremities, and the last endpaper has a tear at the bottom, and still an intriguing book about Boston history.
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