Pearls of American Poetry Illuminated

New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1853.  Sq. 4to. 248 x 220 mm., [ 9 ¾ x 9 inches].  Illustrated with 53 illuminated pages (hinged boards), with highly gilded and decorated borders; all edges gilt. Orig. beveled brown morocco, with gilt title in shield on front cover in blind on rear board. Lacks free front endsheet. Binding rubbed, lacking bit at top of spine. Endsheets foxed. Very sound & clean, complete with orig. tissue guards. First edition  One of three illuminated works by Mapleson, exquisitely printed in the chromolithographic process by Alphonse  Brett and Thomas Sinclair of Philadelphia.  In his pioneering bibliography of American color plate books Whitman Bennett writes, "The editor has been amazed at the variety and the beauty of Mapleson's work, which seems to him...both in abstract decoration and in miniature work, just as good and worthy of enthusiasm as that of the English Sangorski half a century later. And the reproductions are certainly better than the Sangorski reproductions."  William Reese writes, "This collection of poems is one of the most elaborate examples of mimicking illuminated manuscripts by way of chromolithography.  Printed on heavy card stock hinged into a binding, the volume combines the work of two different Philadelphia lithographers, Brett and Sinclair.  Mapleson produced a string of similar books in the early 1850's, at the height of the gift book craze."  Whitman Bennett, A Practical Guide to American Nineteenth Century Color Plate Books,  p. 71.  William Reese, Nineteenth Century American Color Plate Books, 89.  Carl Peters, American on Stone, pp. 108 and 367.