[Rarebooks] FS: Cowan, The Spanish Press of California, 1833-1845

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Offered Today: 

COWAN, ROBERT ERNEST (1862-1942). 

_The Spanish Press of California, 1833-1845_. 

(San Francisco: Lawton R. Kennedy, 1931). 

12mo. 5 3/4 x 3 7/8 inches. [ii], 21, [3] pp. Typographic ornaments on
title page and at head of text, printed on laid paper; text clean,
unmarked. Quarter black morocco, decorative paper over boards, printed
paper front cover label, 2 raised bands on the spine; binding square and
tight, lightly rubbed. Bookplate of Theodore M. Lilienthal. SIGNED by
Robert Ernest Cowan on the colophon. Very Good. 

$ 175 

LIMITED EDITION of 50 copies specially imprinted by Lawton R. Kennedy
for his friends in the Roxburghe Club of California; it was planned and
set in Bulmer type by Thomas W. McDonald in the shop of John Henry Nash
and printed by Lawton R. Kennedy in the shop of Thomas H. Beatty. This
essay on the first printers to operate in California originally appeared
in _Publication No. III_ of the California Historic-Genealogical
Society, San Francisco, 1902. It was reprinted in _A Bibliography of the
Spanish Press of California, 1833-1845_, San Francisco, 1919 where it
appeared as the Preface. In 1928 it was issued separately as an insert
in _The Pacific Printer and Publisher_ by the San Francisco Bay Cities
Club of Printing House Craftsmen. PROVENANCE: Theodore Max Lilienthal
(1893-1972) was the proprietor, with Leon Gelber of Gelber-Lilienthal,
Inc. of San Francisco. Their book shop opened in 1924 and its name
retired in 1946, when it was sold to Lew Lengfeld who renamed it Books,
Inc. Gelber-Lilienthal also operated the Lantern Press (1924-1940),
which published Hildegard Flanner's _A Tree in Bloom and Other Verses_
(1924) and Jake Zeitlin's _Whispers & Chants_ (1927); many Lantern Press
editions were printed by the Grabhorn Press. Also, in 1937, Lilienthal,
his wife Frances, and a neighbor, Edith Van Antwerp (1881-1949) founded
the Quercus Press as a hobby venture. They started with a Vandercook
proof press, but also purchased a Washington hand Press and an Albion
hand Press that was once owned by William Morris (now in the Huntington
Library). Among the things printed at the Quercus Press from 1937 to
1948 were a variety of pamphlets by Christopher Morley, Sherwood
Anderson, Gelett Burgess, but "its most valuable publications were poems
by [Robinson] Jeffers" (1887-1962). Reference: Ritchie: _Theodore
Lilienthal, Robinson Jeffers and the Quercus Press_, p. 6. 

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John Howell 

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