Des Kindes erstes Lesebuch Illustrierte Fibel mit farbigen Bildern (The Child's Alphabet Book Primer Illustrated with Colored Pictures) was published in a number of editions in the late 19th century.  This is an earlier edition, I believe, possibly from the 1880's, but I am not positive.  It lacks a colored cover, which some later editions had, but that is hardly conclusive.  No dates are found in the book itself. I post it mainly for the numerous color and black & white illustrations, but I have added a folder of the entire book (unedited, raw scans in very high resolution) for anyone interested in the book as a whole.  It is written in, but then again it was a child's school book. I have not been able to edit and post the cleaned up pictures yet, but will get to it shortly.  In the meantime the full page scans (very large) are HERE. Title: Des Kindes erstes Lesebuch Illustrierte Fibel mit farbigen Bildern (The Child's Alphabet Book Primer Illustrated with Colored Pictures) Author: Rudolf Dietlein Artist: Various Publisher: J. F. Schreiber Date Published: 1880's (circa) Here is what the images currently look like.   They are very large, so there is plenty of room to play with if you want ...

Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820–1905) joined the war effort with the U.S. Sanitary Commission.  Her book is very comprehensive, and attractive artistically for the blakc and white plates, portraits, and eight colored plates of old flags. The book opens with an extensive description of the Battle Flags.   I cannot transcribe it all, but the text is available at Google Books, HERE. As quoted from Reynolds Historical Library at the University of Alabama at Birmingham: "Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, a native of Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the most well-known female figures in the Union relief movement. Before the Civil War broke out, Mary had already devoted her life to social, humanitarian and charitable causes. In her early twenties, she worked as a family tutor on a large rural Virginia plantation. In this position, she came face to face with the injustices of slavery and became a staunch abolitionist. During these pre-war years, Mary also became known for her involvement in the temperance movement, which especially thrived after her marriage to fellow temperance supporter and Universalist minister, Daniel Parker Livermore, in 1845. Mrs. Livermore organized a juvenile temperance group, the Cold Water Army, for whom she wrote short stories and read them aloud (Holland ...

Here, unedited but for the straightening and cropping of the margins, are 14 map and chart images from the Library of Congress.   As with other LOC images, these are free and Public Domain.  I have converted them to JPEG format for easier access, as otherwise you would need to download them via special viewing software. These are from a 16 century book: "Portolan atlas of 9 charts and a world map, etc. Dedicated to Hieronymus Ruffault, Abbot of St. Vaast. (Agnese, Battista).  The notes state: Manuscript, pen-and-ink and watercolor, on vellum. I have no plans to edit or enhance these for posting here.  They could not be much improved by casual editing, so I will leave them as be.  They are available at full scale in the GALLERY. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Atlantic Ocean "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Eastern Mediterranean, Greece, Turkey"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="182" caption="Compass Rose"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Armillary Sphere"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Black Sea "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Central Mediterranean with Italy, Sicily"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Frontis"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Indian Ocean "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Northern Europe "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Pacific Ocean"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Straits of Gibraltar with Northwest Africa and Spain "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Western ...

I had these scanned and ready to post seven or eight months ago at least. They kept getting shoved to the back burner, and only when I got an email from someone who saw a reference I had made to them was I finally prompted to actually get them organized and posted here. The folder is HERE in the GALLERY. A SUBFOLDER has the images without the text. I will link to some images soon as I get the time. Title: The Flower Children: The Little Cousins of the Field and Garden Author: Elizabeth Gordon Artist: M. T. Ross Publisher: P. F. Volland (Chicago) Date Published: 1910 The Flower Children Store is a shop where you can purchase many items with these images. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Flower Children Zazzle Store"][/caption] I will soon add images linking directly to the Gallery.

I am in the process of scanning this entire atlas.   I acquired this very dilapidated 1883 edition of Cram's popular atlas, and while the binding was shot the pages were in fairly good condition.  I have looked on line and there are few good images available for free public access, so I decided I would post not only the maps and charts but the whole book as well.  Having an entire edition online will hopefully be of help as a reference that goes beyond the pleasures of simply seeing the maps and art. So far I have scanned the first 125 pages or so.   I am posting them in their entirety in THEIR OWN SUB-FOLDER of the atlas' primary folder.  I have not edited the maps yet so for the time being you will only see these full page images.  I have not re-oriented or retitled them, so maps may be sideways, and two-page maps appear in parts.  They do appear in order, though, and the numbers in the titles correspond to the page numbers. The maps and images are not that scarce, but remain collectible and are an affordable way for collectors and map enthusiasts to obtain a desirable, vintage 1800's ...

Here are some nice pictures from Diamonds and Toads, an 1870's book.  These were forwarded to me by Janice Wald, who scanned the images from the book, which belonged to her great grandmother.  You can see the notation from 1894 on the top of the first page of text. These are from the McLoughlin Brothers American edition, which was slightly altered from the original English edition.  Any edition prior to 1900 is rather scarce, and in good condition is sought after by collectors. The story is adapted from Charles Perrault, one of the seminal figures in the birth of the modern fairy tale.   The illustrator was Kate Greenaway, who was a prolific illustrator of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.   Some of her other illustrations are catalogued online and available HERE at the Illuminated Books Project. I have posted all the pages as originally scanned in their own folder.   Thus you can read the full text.  I could not find this exact version of the text online, so posting as text instead of images is not possible now (as I am not about to transcribe it).  I will update this post if I find the text.   The images I have cleaned ...

Here is a fun collection of small drawings by Paul Mercuri from an early to mid 19th century book, Costumes Historiques (Paris, 1850's or 6o's).  I received the scans from a colleague and they were quite dirty, so I have done a lot of touch-up.   Unfortunately, the resolution is not as high as I would like, but they are more than adequate for most online uses, clipart, illustrating reports and the like. As always, these public domain jpg images are free of charge and may be used for any purpose.  Although I have put a lot of effort into cleaning spots and smudges, as well as enhancing the colors, they are still in the public domain and have no usage restrictions.  Donations for my efforts and for the costs of running this site are always appreciated, but are by no means expected or necessary. All 130 or so items may be browsed and downloaded in the gallery.   Images may be downloaded one at a time in at least 3 different sized, or you may download a large number at once via ZIP file by using the shopping cart feature in the gallery.  It is called a shopping cart, but there is no ...

I acquired some very nice high resolution scans of an old butterfly book, "Europe's Best-Known Butterflies" (F. Nemos, Berlin, 1895).  The images were available at Wikimedia Commons, but needed a lot of cleaning up for me to post them here.  I separated the individual butterflies and caterpillars from the larger plates, and did some color enhancement and editing of smudges. The result is close to 200 images in the Gallery here at Old Book Art.   The original 18 full plates (cleaned up) are in their own folder here. The individual butterfly and caterpillar images range from quite small (less than 500 pixels) to very large (3000 pixels or so.)  Some of these look like moths, but I cannot always tell a butterfly from a moth that easily.  The full plates are each about 3850 by 5450 pixels.  As always, these pictures are free and available for no charge here at Old Book Art.  Donations are appreciated but by no means required as these are public domain images that I have simply cleaned up and collected. Here are a few samples.  If you want to browse them all go to the GALLERY. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="141" caption="European Butterflies Plate 10"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Arctia caja ...

Alpha Portland Cement Company Blueprints and Concrete Plans These came in a folder that I found in an old box of maps and blueprints from an architect's estate.  Although not a book, they are in the public domain and interesting so I thought I would post some crude copies. I have not edited them or cleaned them up, and there is some loss to the margins on most of them because they were a bit too large for a scanner.   The actual plans are almost all there, though.  I figure anyone who is interested can clean them up after download if need be (although they are perfectly usable as they are now).   I have posted them at very high resolution (about 6500 by 4500 pixels) to preserve details and lettering. I gather this series, all from 1920-1920, was an effort by the Alpha Portland Cement Company to promote the use of concrete and cement in building.   I think I have almost a complete set here, but I have no definitive reference as to what plans were included. As always, these high resolution JPEG  images are all free of charge and ready to be downloaded one at a time or in bulk via a ...

Collected from my own atlases and maps, others that have been shared with me, and from various online collections, these are available together in one album for ease of browsing and comparison.  Most of the maps not from my own books are from the Library of Congress, where they area available free in TIFF or other archival format.  I have converted them for easy use into JPEG, and have cleaned a lot of them up extensively. This Gallery will continue to grow, but it is at a point now that it is well worth browsing if you are looking for a good sized image. Each map image below leads to the page for that map.  The album is HERE. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Oronce Fine, 1531, Noua, et Integra Uniuersi Orbis Descriptio"][/caption] A very interesting double hemisphere with polar projections. Terra Australis dominates the south pole, while the Americas are very undefined. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Fernando Bertelli, 1565, Universale Descrittione di Tutta la Terra Conosciuta Fin Qui"][/caption] Two wind heads adorn the upper corners. The continental edges are jagged and undefined, and North America is shown as almost wholly contiguous with Asia. Sea monsters and ships roam the oceans. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Jodocus Hondius, 1595, ...

This fairy tale was written by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baronne d'Aulnoy, who wrote extensively and is credited with actually coining the term "fairy tale." The images and text are available elsewhere, but I decided to put up some nice sized and cleaned up scans.  Too often what you can find is either dirty or needs to be edited to be made usable.   The text, too, I have posted, although it is also available at Project Gutenberg.  The version I have posted is that from the 1909 book, and is slightly different from the original, which can be found synopsized here at Wikipedia. Title: Princess Belle-Etoile Author: Traditional Artist: Walter Crane Publisher: John Lane Date Published: 1909 The images below are linked to the gallery pages where I have made them available for download in various sized high resolution JPEG's.  The main gallery page for this book is HERE. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="174" caption="The Corsair Finds the Children "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="174" caption="Feintise and Belle-Etoile "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="174" caption="Prince Cheri saves the turtle-dove "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="174" caption="Prince Cheri and the two-headed monster "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="174" caption="Prince Cheri falls into the spacious hall "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="174" caption="Cheri and Belle-Etoile "][/caption] Full Text Once upon a ...

This title is quite scarce, if not actually rare, at least in English. First published in Europe in the 1840's, these woodcut images were scanned from the 1845 American edition, likely the first edition in the U.S. but I am not sure. I am also unsure if these are all the images, as the book was damaged and missing few leaves of text. It did not look as though any illustration pages were missing, but the only bibliographic references I found were sketchy so it is hard to tell. In the preface the translator writes "The following graphic and authentic descriptions of the incredible barbarities and wickedness of the Spanish Inquisition is written by a Roman Catholic. Whilst many of the characters who figure in the following story are fictitious, the author has adhered closely to facts in every thing relating to the usages of the horrid tribunal which he describes. The portrait of the monster is exact, but the drapery is artificial. The immense popularity of the work on the continent of Europe will surprise no one who peruses its pages. They present unquestionably the most thrilling exhibition of the atrocious wickedness of the Inquisition any where recorded, and this ...

This edition from 1921 is the first American edition, I believe. The plates are identical or very similar to the originals. The image titles and quotes are verbatim from the tissue guards. (The quotations are themselves text excerpts.) It is sometimes hard to determine how extensively to edit my images. The toning and loss of color over decades or centuries will almost always have some effect, but in many cases this actually looks very nice and is what some people either want or expect. Depending on your tastes and the use you have for the image, the aged affect is often preferable. Nevertheless, I have often removed to age toning and brightened the colors, as the cleaner image is a lot fresher, often more useful for certain applications, and will in a lot of cases actually be closer to what the artist intended. I will not pretend to know what Detmold intended, let alone what the color was like at the time of printing, but I here offer  the images in both forms.  The whiter, brighter images are very nice, even if not accurate restorations. The Gallery has links to all the plates, both edited and as scanned.   The images below link ...

This is a collection of images shared with me by the man who scanned them from various antique bibles and other old books, including:  Mathematical Astronomy by C.W.C. Barlow & G.H. Bryan (1893); Dawn of Astronomy by Sir Norman Lockyer (late 1800's); Baedeker's Palestine and Syria (1912); An Illustrated History of the Holy Bible, published by Henry Bill (1871); and The Holy Bible, published by John E. Potter and Company (late 1800's). Rather than being organized by the book they come from, they are roughly organized by subject. This is because they were given to me this way by the person who scanned them, William Struse, and I have kept his organization. The images are all public domain and he shared them with me with the understanding they would be offered for free here. He has only thumbnails on his site, and this was an easy way for him to share the larger images with a broader audience.  The maximum size of each image varies greatly.  I have edited them extensively to clean up the dirt and shadows and to darken, brighten, and otherwise enhance the lines.  A lot of text shows through from the obverse side of the leaves, but ...

Here is another from the Lloyd's Natural History series, published in the late 19th century.  This title has 38 plates, representing only a small part of the information in the volume  (Most volumes, olumes, covering almost the entire animal kingdom, had 30 or more color plates, about 5 by 7 inches.) As with other Lloyd titles, this book can be found, usually for under $200. The plates being intact make it desirable. The Gallery has links to all the plates, both with and without the captions.   The images below link to the individual image pages where they are available for download in various sizes for free. Title: Lloyd's Natural History. A Hand-Book to the Marsupialia and Monotremata Author: Richard Lydekker, B.A, F.R.S., Vice-President of the Geological Society, etc.,etc.,etc. Artist: Various. Publisher: Edward Lloyd Date Published: 1896 [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Great Grey Kangaroo, Macropus giganteus"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Black-Tailed Wallaby, Macropus ualabutus "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Red-Necked Wallaby Macropus ruficollis "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Parry's Wallaby, Macropus parryi "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Dama Wallaby, Macropus eugenii "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Brush-Tailed Rock-Wallaby Petrogale pencillata "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="143" caption="Queensland Tree-Kangaroo, Dorcopsis lumholtzi "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Common Rat-Kangaroo, Potorous tridaclylus "][/caption] [caption ...