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A Catalogue of Books Offered to the Public on the Most Accommodating Terms…Under the Firm of Cooke & Hale at Their Book-Store…
Hartford: Cooke & Hale, 1818. 8vo (8.75” x 5.325”), original stiff brown wrappers. 47 pp., with 6 initial and 3 final blank pp. Early ownership inscriptions in ink to upper wrapper and ffep: “J B G.” A few early ink markings to contents. CONDITION: Good+, outer front hinge partially cracked, 1 initial leaf, evidently blank, excised, .25” loss to lower-right corner of upper wrapper and most pp.; occasional foxing and marginal losses, no affect to contents. An appealing early-nineteenth century bookseller’s catalog published by the short-lived Hartford firm of Horatio Hale and Oliver Cooke, listing books and stationery supplies for sale at their shop “by the north corner of State-House Square.” The books advertised here are listed alphabetically within seven broad categories: theology and religion; law and politics; medicine and natural sciences (including M. Baillie’s “Morbid Anatomy,” “Darwin’s Zoonomia,” and “Hamilton (Alex) on Female Complains”); “Arts, and Sciences” (including classical languages and maps); history, poetry, travels, etc. (including numerous works by women, such as Tabitha Gilman Tenney’s “Female Quixotism” and six works by “Mrs. Hofland”); Belles-lettres and other “Miscellaneous” writings (among them “Washington’s Valedictory address”); and books for children, including “English School-Books” and other moral, entertaining, or illustrated works. Music books and stationery supplies, listed more briefly, are also included in this last category. A “Preface” by Cooke & Hale explains in detail the possible variations in price and stock from what is stated in the catalog, based on factors like “scarcity, difference in value, and stile of execution; difference of copy-right paid to authors, or copy-right holders: and also regard must be had whether the books are imported, or are American publications, and to the advance the publisher puts on the prime cost, or the discount he may make by wholesale from his retail prices,” and so on. Cooke and Hale add that “Many of the standard works hereafter mentioned, are in sheets, and will be bound on short notice in a style to suit the purchaser.” Prices according to size and page count are noted. Oliver D. Cooke (1766–1833) and Horatio G. Hale entered into partnership on March 9th, 1816, selling and occasionally publishing books under the firm name of “Cooke & Hale” until parting ways in 1818. Cooke initially worked with his brother, Increase Cooke as “Increase Cook & Co.,” founded in 1796 to sell books, stationery, and dry goods. By 1799 they added bookbinding to their offerings, and evidently operated a lending library alongside their business, since a notice in the Hartford Courant of the dissolution of the firm in 1802 requests “Those who have taken Books…to search for the following volumes…” (“Public Notice”). Increase afterward relocated to New Haven, and Oliver entered into business on his own, advertising his “book-selling and Book-binding Business, in the house formerly occupied by Oliver D. & I. Cooke” (“Books, Stationary [sic]”). Hale had previously partnered with Elisha Phelps in a book & stationery store, and between 1811 and 1814 published the Connecticut Mirror with Charles Hosmer. REFERENCES: Shaw & Shoemaker 43728; “Oliver D. & I. Cooke,” Hartford Courant, May 9, 1796, p. 2; Andrews, Frank D., comp. Directory for the City of Hartford for the Year 1799 (New Jersey, 1910), p. 11; “Public Notice,” Hartford Courant, April 19, 1802, p. 4; “Books, Stationary, Blank work, &c. Oliver D. Cooke,” Hartford Courant, June 14, 1802, p. 4; “1847: Horatio G. Hale to G & C Merriam” at Spared & Shared 1 online.
Item #9096
Price: $1,750.00
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