Under his guidance the Sweethearts quickly became a draw on the Black theatre circuit. Although there were inevitably disparaging comments, Earl “Fatha” Hines thought them “a wonderful swinging bunch of girls”, and Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Jimmy Lunceford, whose organization they were often compared to, went out of their way to catch the Sweethearts’ sets at the Apollo. The war years, when women musicians thrived in the absence of their male counterparts in the forces, concluded triumphantly with a six month “tour of duty” in Germany entertaining – segregated – audiences of GIs. On their return things fast unravelled, with men demobilised, musical tastes shifting, and the expense of holding together a 16- or 17-piece band in the post-war economic slump, the Sweethearts broke up in 1948. In 1979, the British pianist and long-time National Public Radio host Marian McPartland was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant and later a Guggenheim Fellowship to write a book on the history of women in jazz. She never completed the project, but she did finish this piece on the ISR, which is offered here, in “typescript” and “offprint” form, together with a splendid group of photographs for the project, most bearing her ownership marks on the versos. Twenty-two black and white “8 × 10” glossy reprints of promotional photographs, many with McPartland’s address or annotations on verso; xerox typescript, 26 pages, text rectos only, of McPartland’s history of the band, together with an eight-page printed version, folio, wire-stitched in pictorial wrappers; and a single sheet, a xeroxed roster of the band over the years, with McPartland’s manuscript annotations. Overall, very good. £2,250 [146811]
vol. I with contemporary hand colouring, 11 engraved folding plates. Contemporary armorial bookplate to front pastedowns of George Curry D. D., tutor at St John’s College Cambridge and preacher, a few neat annotations to appendix in vol II. Spines uniformly toned, minor rubbing to extremities, superficial splits to joints, but firm, faint foxing to outer leaves, light offsetting from plates, otherwise generally clean. A very good copy, presenting well. ¶ Barbara T. Gates, Kindred Nature: Victorian and Edwardian Women Embrace the Living World , 1998. £975 [161949] 101 McPARTLAND, Marian. The Untold Story of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm; [together with] ephemera and a collection of photographs from the author’s estate. Merrick, New Jersey: [c.1980] america’s hottest all-girl band An affectionate history of The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, a racially integrated women’s swing band, written by the great British-born jazz pianist; we have not traced any other copy of this privately produced edition. Originally formed in 1938 to raise funds for a Mississippi school which provided vocational education for poor and orphaned African-American children, the band rose to play America’s top Black theatres including Harlem’s fabled Apollo, enjoying over a decade of success. The band was the brainchild of Laurence C. Jones, principal of Piney Woods Country Life School, an institution that he established in woodland about 20 miles from Jacksonville. Always on the lookout for fundraising ideas, Jones saw Ina Ray Hutton and her all-white Melodears – Duke Ellington’s manager’s all-woman orchestra – in Chicago, and recognised the potential.
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100 LOWRY, Delvalle. Conversations on Mineralogy. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822 First edition of the author’s first work, an attractively illustrated treatise published when she was only 22 years old. Written in the form of a dialogue and intended for a general audience, it played an important role in the popularization of science in the early 18th century. Conceived as a companion to Jane Marcet’s Conversations on Chemistry (1805), Lowry’s Conversation emphasises the importance of first-hand learning: “Lowry was dedicated to direct observation and hands-on experimentation, but as a writer she felt that she was offering something far less . . . Lowry got around this dilemma through the ample use of illustrations in her text. Strongly believing that the systematic study of nature required direct observation of minerals, Lowry also referred her readers to museums of mineralogy, to encourage them to see collections themselves” (Gates, pp. 43–4). The plates, engraved by the author and her father on the basis of their original drawings, show a great variety of different minerals and crystal forms. Lowry offers, in the Appendix, her own classification scheme for minerals. Daughter to the distinguished mineralogist Rebekah Eliza Delvalle and the engraver Wilson Lowry, Delvalle Lowry (1800–1859) developed her interest in science at a young age. In her parents’ home, she made the acquaintance of some of the most influential geologists of the time, including John Henry Heuland, William Phillips, John Mawe, all mentioned in the acknowledgements of the present work. Her other books, published later in life under her married name Varley – The Engineer’s Manual , 1846, and Rudimentary Geology , 1848 – were more technical and directed at professionals. Two volumes, duodecimo (177 × 100 mm). Contemporary red half calf, spines with gilt raised bands, green morocco labels, orange endpapers, edges sprinkled red. Engraved folding frontispiece to
99 LOUDON, Margracia. Philanthropic Economy. London: Edward Churton, 1835 “a legitimate interest for that gentler portion of the human race” First edition, the most important economic work of “perhaps the most influential female contributor to the intellectual debate on the repeal of the Corn Laws”, unopened in original state. “In the 1830s a middle-class Irish woman, based in the developing spa town of Leamington in Warwickshire took the literary and political world by storm . . . Her Philanthropic Economy , which was published in 1835, was an innovative attempt to redefine the very nature of government activity and to recast the bases of political economy. The work was widely reviewed and published in several editions before the Anti-Corn Law League chose a section to be distributed to all electors in the 1840s (around nine million copies). Yet her publications and even her name – Margracia Loudon – are largely unknown today” (Richardson, p. 5). Though it was the sections on the Corn Laws which brought fame and notoriety, the work more broadly is a well- developed system of political economy, extending into the areas of wealth creation, taxation policy, currency reform, and the ballot. Octavo. Original blue quarter cloth, printed paper spine label, grey paper boards. Contents unopened. Label a little darkened with splits following joints, slight wear to tips, light spotting to endpapers and finger-soiling to title. An excellent copy. ¶ Goldsmiths’ 29299; not in Kress. Sarah Richardson, The Political Worlds of Women: Gender and Politics in Nineteenth Century Britain , 2013. £850 [136684]
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All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
LOUDER THAN WORDS
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