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Origins of this collection
These books were retrieved by Tom L. McFarland in June 2001 from 87 West State Avenue in Phoenix, when the owner (Dorathy Adele McFarland) had a stroke and could no longer maintain her house. Dorathy McFarland did not recall how these books got into her home, but they had been there since she and her late husband Tom had retired there about 1972. Dorathy's son Tom L. McFarland intentionally searched the chaotic home for pictures and family records, finding these books and an old photo album on the shelves of a dusty bookcase. Dorathy's sister Jeanne suggests that these old volumes had once graced about 9 feet of bookshelf in the den of her parents' home in Waukesha County, but after her parents suffered a severe automobile accident about 1947, this country home became too much to care for, and the books were offered to Dorathy and Jeanne. The boxed books were transferred (un-opened) to Dorathy's home in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, and in 1972, when Dorathy's husband retired and the couple moved to Arizona, the boxes came along, and the contents placed on built-in shelves in the retirement home. Tom L. McFarland never saw these books while he lived at the Wauwatosa home from 1941 to 1956. Jeanne also has kept a few books from this collection, such as Verne's 20 Thousand Leagues under the sea. |
| Title | Author | Publisher | Date of publication |
condition of book |
| Travels into several remote nations of the World | Swift, Lemuel Gulliver | C.S. Van Winkle, NY | 1812 | fair |
| Self-Deception (vol. 1 and 2) | Mrs. Ellis | Stringer & Townsend, NY | 1852 | good minus |
| The History of England (Stoddart's edition) | Thomas Babington Macaulay | J.M. Stoddart, Phila. | none, est. 1850s | good minus |
| The White Hills (1st edition) | Thomas Starr King | Isaac N. Andrews, Boston | 1859; inserted 1907 postcard | very good |
| The poetical Works of Jean Ingelow | Jean Ingelow | Thomas Crowell | Dedication 1863, hand dated 1885 | excellent |
| Women of the War | Frank Moore | S.S.Scranton | 1866 | good |
| Dicken's Works Illustrated (13 pocket-sized volumes) | Charles Dickens | Ticknor & Fields, Boston | 1867 | excellent |
| Hope Campbell, or, Know Thyself (pocket size) | Cousin Kate | Anson D.F. Randolph | 1868 | excellent |
| An Old-fashioned Girl | Louisa M. Alcott | Roberts Bros | 1872 | fair |
| Vanity Fair (household edition) | Wm Thackeray | Harper & bros, NY | none | good plus |
| The Origin of Species | Charles Darwin | D. Appleton | 1873 | good plus |
| Rob Roy | Sir Walter Scott | DeWolfe, Fiske, Boston | none | good plus |
| Les Misérables (in English) | Victor Hugo | George Rutledge and sons, NY | none | good |
| Hoyles Games | Hoyle, Thomas Frere | Lee, Shepard, Dillingham, NY | preface 1857, hand dated 1873 | excellent |
| Poetical Works of Lord Byron | Byron | Porter & Coates | hand dated 1878 | fair |
| A Tramp Abroad | Mark Twain | American Publishing Co. | 1880 | good minus |
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Achievements of Stanley and other African explorers |
Hon. J.T. Headley | Hubbard Bros, N.D. Thompson, and A.L. Bancroft | 1878 | good minus |
| In Darkest Africa (vols 1 & 2) | Henry M. Stanley | Charles Schribner's Sons | 1890 | good |
| The Path to Home | Edgar A. Guest | Reilly & Lee | 1919 | good plus |
| The Foreigner | Ralph Connor | The Westminster Co., Toronto | 1909 | good |
| Poems for Every Mood | Harriet Monroe | Whitman, Racine | 1933 | good plus |
| Treasure Island (pocket size) | Robert Louis Stevenson | Macmillan | 1914 | excellent |
| My Doggie and I | R.M. Ballantyne | James Nisbet, London | preface 1881, hand dated 1904 | excellent |
| Adventures of Gil Blas (in English) | Santillane | Porter & Coates | hand dated 1895 | good minus |
| Aesop's Fables | translated by Fyler Townsend | Donohue, Henneberry | 1890 | excellent |
| A Thousand Miles up the Nile | Amelia Edwards | A.L. Burt | preface 1877, hand dated 1899 | good |
| Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (2 volumes) | Grant | Charles L. Webster, NY | 1886 | excellent |
| The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson | Alfred Tennyson | Belford, Clarke | 1885 | good plus |
| The Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier | Whittier | James Osgood | 1876 | good minus |
| The Life of Napoleon the Great | Sir Walter Scott | World Publishing House, NY | 1877 | good minus |
| The Monkey that would not kill | Henry Drummond | Dodd, Mead | 1898 | good plus |
| Three Men in a Float (pocket size) | Jerome K. Jerome | Hurst | preface 1889 | excellent |
| Wheeler's graded readers | Gail Calmerton & William Wheeler | W. H. Wheeler | 1900 | excellent |
| Robinson Crusoe | Daniel Defoe | McLoughlin, NY | none, illustrations copied from original by electrotype | good plus |
| How Mr. Dog got even | Albert Bigelow Paine | Harper & Bros | 1900 | excellent |
| Uncle Tom's Cabin | Harriet Beecher Stowe | Hurst | 1901 | excellent |
| Two Little Savages | Ernest Thompson Seton | Doubleday | 1903 | good minus |
| When Wilderness was King | Randall Parrish | A.C. McClurg | 1904 | excellent |
| Riley Farm-Rhymes | James Whitcomb Riley | Grosset & Dunlap | 1905 | excellent |
| The Brown Owl's Story | Amy Prentice | A.L. Burt | 1906 | good plus |
| Rolf in the Woods | Ernest Thompson Seton | Doubleday | 1922 | re-bound, excellent |
| Wild Animals at home | Ernest Thompson Seton | Grosset & Dunlap | 1913 | excellent minus |
| Putnam's Word Book | G.P. Putnam's sons | Knickerbocker Press, NY | 2nd ed., 1919 | good plus |
| Just Because of You (pocket size) | Wilbur Nesbit | Wise-Parslow | hand dedicated "1936 To Tommy darlin' from Dorathy" | excellent |
| Over Here | Edgar A. Guest | Reilly & Lee | 1918 | excellent |
| Just Folks | Edgar A. Guest | Reilly & Lee | 1917 | excellent |
| Household Fairy Tales | Brothers Grimm | A.L. Burt | hand dates 1919 | good minus |
| Scarlet Letter (pocket size) | Nathaniel Hawthorne | Macmillan | 1920 | excellent |
| The Poems of Eugene Field | Eugene Field | Chas Schribner | 1920 | excellent plus |
| The Child's World, Third Reader | Betty S. Browne | B.F. Johnson | 1920 | excellent |
| Adventures of Bunny Boy | Howard Famous | Western Printing & Lithographing, Racine | none | excellent |
| The Carved Shoes; The Feathered Messenger | Higgins | Western Printing & Lithographing, Racine | none | good minus |
| Crime and Punishment | Dostoyevsky | Macmillan | 1927 | good plus |
| Book of Famous Poems for older boys nd girls | Marjorie Burrows | Whitman | 1931 | good plus |
| Collected verse of Lewis Carroll | Lewis Carroll | Macmillan | 1933 | excellent |
| German Bible | Shafer und Koradi | 1663 | fair |
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Comments on the above collection by Michael Edmonds, rare book specialist at the Wisconsin Historical Society
Tom - These are the ones that might be worth checking at www.abebooks.com. The others appear much less likely to have either financial or historical value. You may find that to be true of some of these, too, when you check them online.
Most of these would have value only if they are the first printing, so the publisher and the date are very important considerations. If any of the books have breath-taking color illustrations, signatures by famous people (U.S. Grant's, by the way, was signed in the plate; he had died by the time the two volumes were printed), or other features that leap out at you when you handle them, then they may be more valuable than is apparent from a simple list. Attached is an exhibit label I made up once when displaying rare books for visiting donors. It may help you get a sense of what "rare" means, too. Best wishes, - Michael |
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