johnson rare books & archives, ABAA (20 results)

Trade paperback. Condition: Very good. This copy is inscribed by Pomeroy on the title page, with a holographic note from her laid in. 148 p. with textual photographs. Octavo. Original paper wrappers, with the prospectus laid in. Mild dust staining to the bottom edge, with some light sun fading along the spine; otherwise very good.

Seller Inventory # 68866

Soft cover. Condition: Fine. First edition. 337 p. Foreword by Edgar Wayburn, M.D., Honorary President, Sierra Club. Textual photographs, illustrations, and maps, including the color folding map at the rear. Presentation copy, inscribed by Wheat to distinguished Southern California historian Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. on the half-title. Original glossy paper wrappers. A fine copy. Inscribed by Author.

Seller Inventory # 61573

Hardcover. Condition: Very good. First Edition. Compiled over the course of 31 years, this is as detailed and authoritative a zoological taxonomy as you can find, with the animals divided by genus, and profiled by size, weight, common and latin names, range, unique physical and biological attributes, and behavioral traits. Profusely illustrated. Quarto, two volumes. Black marker over previous owner's address on the front flyleaf in both volumes; otherwise a very good set, housed in the publisher's slipcase.

Seller Inventory # 4088

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. Lavish celebration of India's incredible natural abundance, featuring more than 2,000 stunning full-color images. Thick quarto. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket, housed in the publisher's slipcase - as new, still sealed in the original shrink wrap.

Seller Inventory # 72157

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First edition. Frontispiece photograph, with illustrations by Ernest Thompson Seton. Collection of previously unpublished notes, essays, diary entries, poems, and articles by Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946), compiled by his second wife Julia, that serves as a sort of informal biography of the beloved writer and illustrator best known for his popular books of animal stories. Seton was also a prominent naturalist in his time and, as one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America, wrote the first Scout Manual. Inscribed and dated in the year of publication by Julia M. Seton on the half-title. A crisp, near fine copy in a lightly edgeworn dust jacket. Inscribed by Author.

Seller Inventory # 58696

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. 18 plates, with 90 illustrations. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1955. Second edition, revised and enlarged. Original blue cloth binding, with gilt titles. The spine is a trifle sun faded; otherwise very good.

Seller Inventory # 56835

Hardcover. Condition: Very good. First Edition. Signed by the author on the title page. The first of two books written by Mary Farrand Rogers Miller (1868-1971), the American writer, naturalist, and educator. A graduate of Cornell University, she was married to noted landscape architect Wilhelm Tyler Miller, with whom she moved to Los Angeles in 1920. Later in life, after experience hearing loss, Miller became active in deaf education and advocacy. Octavo: 241 p. with 16 half-tones and numerous line engravings. Original green cloth binding, with a half-tone inset on the front panel and dark green titles. Just the faintest hint of foxing to a few prefatory leaves; else very good or better.

Seller Inventory # 74229

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. Limited to 500 copies. "When John Muir was a student in the University of Wisconsin he was a frequent caller at the house of Dr. Ezra S. Carr. The kindness shown him there, and especially the sympathy which Mrs. Carr, as a botanist and a lover of nature, felt in the young man's interests and aims, led to the formation of a lasting friendship. He regarded Mrs. Carr, indeed, as his 'spiritual mother,' and his letters to her in later years are the outpourings of a sensitive spirit to one who he felt thoroughly understood and sympathized with him. These letters are therefore peculiarly revealing of their writer's personality. Most of them were written from the Yosemite Valley, and they give a good notion of the life Muir led there, sheep-herding, guiding, and tending a sawmill at intervals to earn his daily bread, but devoting his real self to an ardent scientific study of glacial geology and a joyous and reverent communion with Nature." Octavo: [i], 194 p. Original red cloth binding, with gilt titles. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket.

Seller Inventory # 76190

Wraps. Condition: Near fine. First Edition. Signed by Sylvia Massey Czerkas and Donald F. Glut on the half-title. Pictorial survey and appreciation of the work of Charles R. Knight (1874-1953), an American wildlife and paleoartist best known for his detailed paintings of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. Though somewhat speculative and not entirely based on solid evidence, Knight's paintings put flesh on creatures no one had ever seen and helped shape the image of dinosaurs that lives in public consciousness to this day. Foreword by Edwin H. Colbert. Quarto: [iv], [120] p. with numerous illustrations (many color). Original pictorial paper wrappers. Near fine.

Seller Inventory # 76795

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. First Edition. In this landmark work of environmental history, Cronon offers an original and profound explanation of the effects European colonists' sense of property and their pursuit of capitalism had upon the ecosystems of New England. Octavo: x, [4], 241 p. Original tan paper-covered boards over a black cloth spine with gilt titles. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket.

Seller Inventory # 77103

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. Account of Muir's journey from the University of Wisconsin to his first summer in the Sierra, consisting of his journal of the walk ending in San Francisco, an excerpt from a letter detailing his first excursion in California to Yosemite, and an essay expressing his appreciation for the low hills of the great Central Valley. Octavo: xxviii, 220 p. with a frontispiece and 12 plates. Original green cloth binding, with a color reproduction of a painting by Miss Amelia M. Watson inset on the front board and titles in white. The spine is lightly faded, with a little bit of rubbing to the white titles and some minor wear to the corners and tips; otherwise very good. Kimes 340.

Seller Inventory # 75908

Hardcover. Later printing, with additions and corrections from the sixth and last English edition. Arguably the most significant work of science in the Western canon, The Origin of Species first appeared in 1859, positing a theory of evolution in which living organisms change through a series of random permutations, which are 'naturally selected' insofar as they are adapted to their environment. Octavo, two volumes: xxvi, 365 p. + v, 339 p. with the publisher's ads at the rear. Original brown cloth binding, with gilt titles and black and blind-stamped decorations. Some sparse pencil marginalia, with erasures to the each front flyleaf. Bookplate and a small address label to each front pastedown. The spines are darkened just a touch, with some general shelfwear.

Seller Inventory # 76372

Hardcover. Condition: Near fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Very good. First edition thus, with "First Modern Library Edition, 1936" on the copyright page. A Modern Library "Giant", brining together for the first time in one volume the two principal works of Charles Darwin (1809-82). Octavo: xvi, 1000 p. Original blue cloth binding, with silver stamping. A near fine copy in an especially nice dust jacket with some mild toning and wear along the extremities. Scarce.

Seller Inventory # 76605

Wraps. Condition: Very good. First Edition. "This book is one of the most elaborate monographs ever devoted to a single order of mammals. By its publishing the outlook on the primates has been altered in a way that can be appreciated by those only who have for some time been actively occupied in the study of monkeys. In its 1,351 quarto pages may be found a complete review of the work done in the past by the author himself, his contemporaries and predecessors. It contains descriptions of all the known species drawn up by one person from direct examination of the specimens in all the principal museums of the world. Finally the series of photographs reproduced in 111 of the plates is so well selected and so fine in quality that it might be said almost to exceed in general usefulness the specimens hitherto existing in any one museum" (Science, Vol. XXXIX, No. 992). Elliot (1835-1915) was the first curator of zoology at the Field Museum in Chicago, as well as one of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the American Ornithologists' Union. Quarto, three volumes: cxxvi [ii], 317, xxxviii + xviii, [ii], 382, xxvi + xiv, 262, clxviii p. with 26 color plates (27 called for, lacking the Lasiopyga l'hoesti plate opposite p.297 in the second volume) and 135 black-and-white plates. The Correction sheet is laid into the third volume. Original printed paper wrappers. Largely unopened. Some general toning and wear along the extremities; else very good.

Seller Inventory # 76651

Brief handwritten note and five manuscript pages by the American naturalist Wilson Flagg (1805-1884). The manuscripts are devoted to descriptions of the Loon, Purple Martin, and the King Bird. He analyzes the cry of the Loon and adds the impressions of Samuels, Nuttall, and Winthrop. The newspaper printing of this essay has been affixed to the verso of the first manuscript page and the writers obituary to the second page. Also provided is his essay "The Purple Martin &" in which he described the flight and song of the Martin, as well as this bird's battles with the King Bird. Flagg was the author of "Studies in the Field and Forest" (Boston, 1857); "Woods and By Ways of New End' land" (1872); and "Birds and Seasons of New England" (1875). He also edited "Mount Auburn, its Scenes, its Beauties, and its Lessons". The contents of these books were republished, with some new materiel, under the title "Halcyon Days", "A Year among the Trees", and "A Year with the Birds" (three volumes, Boston, 1881). The half-page note, dated March 3, with no year indicated, is addressed to Mr. Clement and relays that he has been ill with bronchial asthma and unable to write for two months. The manuscript pages contain a few tiny holes, probably from spindling and some printer's ink marks; otherwise very good.

Seller Inventory # 77082

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First published in 1868, this book began as an expansion of the first two chapters of On the Origin of Species (1859): "Variation under Domestication" and "Variation under Nature," and it developed into one of his largest works; Darwin (1809-82) referred to it as his "big book." The first volume deals with the variations introduced into species as a result of domestication, through changes in climate, diet, breeding, and an absence of predators. He began with an examination of dogs and cats, comparing them with their wild counterparts, and moved on to investigate horses and asses; pigs, cattle, sheep, and goats; domestic rabbits; domestic pigeons; fowl; and finally cultivated plants. The work is a masterpiece of nineteenth-century scientific investigation, and a key text in the development of Darwin's own thought and of the wider discipline of evolutionary biology. Octavo, two volumes: xiv, 473 p. + x, 495 p. with publisher's advertisements, 43 textual figures, and numerous tables. Original brown cloth bindings, with gilt titles and decorative black and blind stamping. The boards are especially clean and bright, with only some light wear to the corners and tips. Quite lovely, uncommon thus. Second Edition, Revised - Fourth Thousand.

Seller Inventory # 74513

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Third edition, with an appendix by Prof. T.G. Bonney, D.Sc., F.R.S., F.G.S. 344 p. with three folding plates and the publisher's ads. Octavo. Original brown cloth binding, with decorative gilt and black stamping. An ex-library copy with minimal markings: a bookplate to the front pastedown and a small numeric label to the spine. Minor creases to the folding plates. The top edge is a trifle dust stained, with some mild foxing to the fore-edge. There is also a small bit of rubbing to the corners and tips. From the library of the esteemed American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002). In his essay "Worm for a Century" from the collection Hen's Teeth and Horse's Teeth: Further Reflections in Natural History (1983), Gould argued that this, Darwin's first book on a specific subject, is essential to understanding his theoretical approach: "This book is about coral, but it is also about historical reasoning. Vegetable mold formed fast enough to measure its rate directly; we capture the past by summing effects of small and observable present causes. But what if rates are too slow, or scales too large, to render history by direct observation of present processes? For such cases, we must develop a different method. Since large-scale processes begin at different times and proceed at diverse rates, the varied stages of different examples should exist simultaneously in the present. To establish history in such cases, we must construct a theory that will explain a series of present phenomena as stages of a single historical process. The method is quite general. Darwin used it to explain the formation of coral reefs. We invoke it today to infer the history of stars.".

Seller Inventory # 69842

Hardcover. Condition: Very good. First Edition. First edition, second issue with the "htat" misprint on the first line of page 208. The author's third major work of evolutionary theory, following On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871). Initially intended as a chapter in The Descent of Man, The Expression grew in length and was published separately in 1872. This book concerns the biological aspects of emotional behavior, and Darwin explores the animal origins of such human characteristics as the lifting of the eyebrows in moments of surprise and the raising of the upper lip in an aggressive sneer. Octavo: vi, 374 p. with 7 heliotype plates (3 folding), 21 textual figures, and 4 p. publisher's ads. Original green cloth binding, with gilt stamping, blind-stamped borders, and black endpapers. Some marginal creasing (not affecting the images) and minor foxing to the folding plates. Period previous owner's pencil signature to the top of the title page. The hinges are just starting and still quite sound. A bit of wear to the corners and tips; else very good.

Seller Inventory # 76531

Vellum. Condition: Near fine. First Edition. Issued simultaneously with the Regular Edition of 150 copies and the Deluxe Edition of 60 copies, this is number VI of 15 State Proofs signed by Alan James Robinson. Printed by Harold P. McGrath at Hampshire Typothetae. The Van Dijck Monotype was set and cast by Michael and Winifred Bixler. Illustrated with 16 wood engravings by Alan James Robinson. Hand-bound in full limp vellum at Gray Parrot's Bindery in Easthampton. This State Proof is accompanied by a one-quarter vellum over linen chemise housing 14 state proofs of the etchings, 28 working proofs, 3 states of the frontispiece portrait, and a rejected print, each signed by the artist, along with an original pencil sketch by Robinson. Accompanied by the string-bound prospectus, also signed by Robinson. Housed in a one-quarter vellum over linen clamshell box, with gilt stamping. Just a hint of foxing along the extremities of the clamshell box; else near fine. An elegant production.

Seller Inventory # 75611

Hardcover. Condition: Very good. Folio, two volumes: 478 p. with over 600 etchings, photogravures, wood engravings, etc. In one-half morocco over pebbled cloth bindings, with decorative gilt stamping, five raised bands, and beveled edges. A closed tear to p.45-6 in the first volume has been neatly mended. Small ink stamp ("Dolgeville Academy") to the bottom of a few leaves in each volume. The leather has been professionally refurbished. A very good set. Kimes 174; Zamorano Select 87. "In 1887 James Dewing and his associates conceived the idea of publishing the grandest California pictorial book of the nineteenth century, which would make money while taking advantage of the growing fascination with California and the West. Copying the format and title of William Cullen Bryant's hightly successful Picturesque America, they selected John Muir (1838-1914) as editor and a group of artists including Thomas Hill, William Keith, Julian Rix, and Charles Dorman Robinson to help create an elaborate subscription publication in a variety of formats. Muir wrote seven of the chapters; it is unclear how much he was really involved in editorial decisions" (Alan Jutzi).

Seller Inventory # 76204