Story of Two Bulls 1856 rare Daniel Burgess hand color children’s picture book

Published NY, 1856 by D. Burgess.. 

16 pp.+ covers, four hand colored (orig.) wood engraved images.

Nice example overall with eye appeal.

Spine paper splitting and neatly hand stitched long ago in typical manner, some overall dustiness, assorted small age spotting or soiling, light signs of handling, clearly an example which was set aside and taken care of but also looked at regularly.

Nicer than you might expect for fragile juvenile paper booklets from the middle of the 19th century, so over 150 years old. Precursor to modern comic books of the 1930's and then Golden Age on.

Images still mostly clean. 

The survival rate of 19th century color paper juvenile books such as this is very low, a minuscule percentage (almost certainly under 10% in most cases, probably 1-5% of half of all those originally produced. Some issues scattered all over the place in publishing history may all but no longer exist as copies.

So even if it were “a lot” made then, it would still be very modest by most modern standards of production.

Meaning the actual sales run of hand made books like this would have to be measured in low thousands, thus meaning survival rates probably below 100 -200 per title, with variations of course depending upon factors such as size, title, orig. price, condition, etc.

Therefore, all surviving examples of 19th century color juvenile books should be considered inherently scarce and worthy of acquisition on some level, their actual comparative rarity being mostly invisible to the uninformed observer.

Book measures c. 7 1/2“ H x 4 3/4“W.

B15217