A Book of Favourite Modern Ballads Illustrated with Fifty Engravings from Drawings by the First Artists

New York: Appleton. Very Good. 1860. Decorative Leather. xiii, (3), 167, (1) pages; Contents unmarked and secure in original brown full morocco binding with decorative stamping in darker brown to both boards, gilt lettering at spine and five raised bands; floral patterned endpapers; all edges gilt; decorative gilt borders framing each page; foxing throughout. Beautiful binding with elaborate border frames in darker brown impressed on front and rear boards; decorative gilt devices in four compartments at spine; gilt dentelles borders to interior edges of boards; some minor rubbing and small scratch. A lovely 19th century binding. Pagination: xiii, [3], 167, [1] Frontispiece and engraved titlepage; text enhanced by dozens of illustrations engraved and printed by Edmund Evans, after drawings by Warren Albert Henry, John Callcott Horsley, Percival Skelton, Edward Duncan, George Harrison Thomas, Edward Henry Corbould, Myles Birket Foster, Samuel Palmer, Charles West Cope, William James Grant, Edwin Weedon, George Elgar Hicks, Harrison Weir, et al. OCLC 931268038 Engraved personal calling card laid in which reads J. B. Lippincott with a handwritten note "to Miss Ball A very happy Christmas" This would be Joshua Ballinger Lippincott (1813- 1886), the well-known Philadelphia publisher and bookseller. Of Quaker parentage, after a common school education, Lippincott went to Philadelphia, where he was employed in a bookstore, and soon was in charge of the business. In 1836 he founded the publishing house of J.B. Lippincott and Co. In 1850, Lippincott purchased the entire stock of Grigg and Elliott, moving his firm to the head of the booktrade in Philadelphia. He established "Lippincott's Magazine" in 1868, the "Medical Times" a few years later, and in 1875 a London agency to facilitate the importation of European literature into the United States. For many years he was a director of the Reading railroad, the Philadelphia savings bank, the Union League Club, and the Academy of Fine Arts, and a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania. .