No doubt it is "the early bird that catches the worm." But, as the pillow-loving boy said to his father, "it is the early worm that gets caught." Early Rising, Or It is the early worm that gets caught William Mathews San Francisco, CA: The Cloister Press, 1938 PS2368 M8...

“No swellings tell that winds may be upon some far-off happier sea- No heavings hint that winds have been on seas less hideously serene.” — Edgar Allan Poe, “The City in the Sea” Rare Books invites you to view its most recent virtual lecture, "A Drop in the Ocean." Learn...

"[Benjamin Franklin] holds deserved preeminence in the long line of distinguished American printers. The leading features of his useful and brilliant career as a statesman and philosopher are so well known that it is unnecessary to dwell upon them here. But it is worthy of...

““How could the human mind progress, while tormented with frightful phantoms, and guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears? Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity: he has been taught stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness was...

“Still, wond’rous youth! each noble path pursue, On deathless glories fix thine ardent view: Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire!” — from “To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works” POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL… Phillis...

HE KAINE DIATHEKE, NOVUM TESTAMENTUM Wigorniae, Massachusettensi: excudebat Isaias Thomas, Jun, 1800 Editio Prima Americana This is the first American printing of the Greek New Testament, considered a milestone in American printing history. Isaiah Thomas’ printing shop was dubbed “the sedition factory,” during the American Revolution. Thomas moved his...

      “A catt may look on a king” Lexicon Tetraglotton, an English-French-Italian-Spanish… James Howell (1594? – 1666) London: Printed by J.G. for Samuel Thompson, 1660 First and only edition James Howell, born in Wales and educated at Oxford, began his literary career in 1640 with the political allegory, Dendrologia: Dodona’s...

“…that sacred blessing of Liberty, without which man is a beast, and government a curse” “No free government was ever founded or ever preserved its liberty without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defence of the state…such are a...