Lot Details
Lot 16
BARNUM, H.L. The Spy Unmasked; or, Memoirs of Enoch Crosby, alias Harvey Birch, the Hero of Mr. Cooper's Tale of the Neutral Ground: Being an Authentic Account of the Secret Services He Rendered His Country During the Revolutionary War.
New York: J. & J. Harper, 1828. First edition. Original cloth backed boards with paper spine label, housed in a green morocco backed slipcase. 9 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches (24 x 14 cm); frontispiece portrait, map and 5 plates, 206 [1, ads] pp., an additional advertisement leaf to the front pastedown, an uncut copy. Some restoration and strengthening to spine and hinges, rubbing and small losses, moderately foxed, contemporary ownership signature to upper board and title of Benjamin Mathews, signature of H.L. Pinckney to the pastedown; Boxed with the sheets of an 1886 Fishkill edition, apparently never bound, 152 pp., with the portrait and three plates on vari-colored paper, chips to one text leaf, this item not fully collated.
First edition of the true story of Enoch Crosby, the basis for the character of Harvey Birch in James Fenimore Cooper's 1821 The Spy. Boxed together, the two works here are finely presented. For the 1828 first edition, see: Howes H161; Sabin 3559.
C Private Collection of Barbara and Ira Lipman
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