The Book Buyer’s Manual: A Catalogue of Foreign and American Books in Every Department of Literature. With a Classified Index. Bound with: Supplement to Putnam’s Book Buyer’s Manual.
New York: 1852. Item #790 8vo. 225 x 150 mm., [8 ¾ x 6 inches]. [2], 235, [1] pp., [viii], 48 pp. Original leather-backed boards; leather spine rubbed and dry, with the text block light foxed throughout. Amazing collection of books for sale in the early 1850’s, when the explosive growth in American publishing was taking off. Private collectors and libraries were building collections of books for mechanics halls, local libraries, and schools all over the country and the demand for printed material was growing with it. This catalogue issued by Putnam, one of the first after establishing his own firm in 1848 after leaving Wiley and Putnam, is one of the largest of its kind issued to date. Incorporating both newly published, imported, and antiquarian books, the catalogue covers all fields of literature, history, travel, the arts and science, and law. It also includes children’s books in all these fields. The index which covers over forty pages, is organized by subject is an extremely useful guide to the breathe and scope of Putnam’s business. The Supplement includes recently published books from 1850 - 1852, not in the original list. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, V, p. 142. (799)
Price: $100.00