RAINBOW

[GIFT BOOK] THE RAINBOW. Albany & New York: A. L. Harrison, 1848. First edition, second issue. Original color-stamped cream calf, heavily gilt, stamped in red, brown, and green, all edges gilt, decorated glazed end papers, signed in gilt in the binding by Harrison "A. L. Harrison, Binders, Patent Stereographic Binding." An anthology of works by William Gilmore Simms, James T. Fields (the publisher), Sarah Helen Whitman (Poe's fiancee), and a host of female writers. One of the most striking American bindings of the nineteenth century. This book was published in 1847, but sales were slow and to sell unsold copies the next year, copies were painstakingly altered to make them look like a fresh publication. The spine date of 1847 was covered with a label stamped 1848; the vignette title-page date was covered with a carefully cut paste-over cancel; the title-page date (in Roman numerals) was changed to 1848 by the simple addition of an extra `I' slightly out of alignment; and the date in the preface was erased and then overstamped. Mild aging, but a very attractive copy of a book usually seen in shambles. This binding is one of only a handful of books pictured in BAL (I:202) and the details of its publication are described in this cataloguer's article on gift-books in `Firsts Magazine' (December, 2001). For many years this was regarded as a stencilled binding, but the original patent (#5327, granted October 9, 1847) describes the process using wood blocks inked with flannel and stamped on the leather after first blindstamping the pattern for the gilding. "This binding is unusually successful from a technical point of view."--Maser. Not in Papantonio. Maser 47 (illustrated; first state only, describing the colors as "onlays"). BAL 5921 and 1027 (illustrated, and describing the binding as stencilled).