Elton's Pictorial A.B.C. Embellished with 230 engravings, or illustrated nouns.

New York and Boston: T. W. Strong, 1848. 98 Nassau St and 64 Cornhill. Engraved wraps and 16 unnumbered pages with two letters represented on each page. About Very Good with a faint tidemark to the upper gutter subsiding toward the inner pages; mild bumping/edgewear and foxing, as expected. With a whipstitched spine repair and “Property of" inscription dated 1854—originally owned by Henrietta Dunn of Lake City, PA (1847-1892), surely one of her first books.

An exceptionally handsome alphabet book published by Thomas Strong. Strong had apprenticed under "Old" Robert Elton (alongside the McLoughlin brothers) and was just a few years into running his own operation when he published this. The 230 engravings form a defacto specimen book and are full of clever examples, like the "zig-zag" drawn as lightning. Its unusual beauty earned it a spot in the modernist designer and children’s game designer Arnold Arnold's 1969 "Pages from Early American Children's Books." A publication with the same title, but fewer pages, is recorded in OCLC (2 copies), but none match this example. An exquisite and rare graphic production.