The New Primary Geography

Hardcover cloth quarto, 114pp; bound with 8-page A Geography of Pennsylvania: Designed for Schools, and intended to accompany Mitchell's New Primary Geography by J.P. Wickersham (Philadelphia: E.H. Butler & Co., 1876). Textblock in about Very Good condition with toning and fingersoil. Illustrated with color maps and copious vignettes.

A wonderfully individual example of this very popular geography textbook, featuring a large ownership inscription in the tradition of Fraktur bookplates combined with a more Spencerian-influenced scroll design that fits with the later date (1884). Executed by Reily P. Moyer of Berks County, with a leaf from their penmanship book slipped in under the front closure of a vernacular dust cover made from patterned fabric highly evocative of middle-class period style. The cloth is frayed along the edges, peeling back from the foredge of the rear board and has stitched repairs along the upper joints.