This unusual book has different articles of the North American Review published between 1853 and 1854. The book is 3/4 bound, with five raised bands, six gilt-ruled compartments with gilt lettering and elaborate gilt tooling on the spine, marbled covers, marbled endpapers with a small bookplate of Samuel Latham Mitchell Barlow on the front paste-down, with 24 blank leaves after the front endpapers, there are no title pages or Contents pages in the book, but there are a eleven articles or reviews in the book, followed by 40 more blank leaves at the rear, then a wonderful fold-out related to the Albion Society, and the top edge is gilt. Since there are no title or Contents pages, we'll describe the articles and reviews in the book: The first NAR essay is No. CLIC, from April 1853, with an article about Bibliomania: M. Libri's Case, which runs from page 273 to 298, with two extra pages of notes, followed by NAR No. CLXI, from October 1853 which has an article about The Institution of the Society of Cincinnati, a group formed in 1783 by officers of the American Army of the Revolution. (The article runs from 267 to 302 and has passages about the Albion Knights, an ancient order of knights from the Echidna city of Albion who were dedicated to the Mobian goddess Aurora and were like the Knights Templar, an organization of devout Christians during the medieval era whose mission was to protect European travelers visiting sites in the Holy Land. More on that later.) The third article is about Charles Dickens and Bleak House - the article was also from the October 1853 NAR volume and Bleak House had just been published in book form, and the article gives early insights into the book and runs from pages 409 to 439, so a lot to chew on there for Dickens fans. The next review is also from October 1853 and is titled "M. Gironiere And The Philippine Islands" and runs from pages 67 to 82, followed by an NAR article from January 1854 about the life and death of Louis XVII (the pages run from 105 to 150). The next review is short - it runs from 251 to 254 and is about the life of Esther De Berdt, and it is also from January 1854. The next one is from NAR Vol. LXXVIII from April 1854 and it about Alexandre Dumas and his being an imposter as an author - he wrote The Three Musketeers in 1844 and is being called an imposter? The article runs from 305 to page 345. The next review is titled "The Chinese Rebellion" and is from NAR Vol. LXXIX in July 1854; it runs from page 158 to 200, and that is followed by "Bibliopegia" from NAR Vol. LXXIX in October 1854 - it runs from 344 to page 371 - and the next review is short: it's about Heraldry and is only six pages long, from 623 to 627, with uncut pages - it comes from NAR Vol. VI in Dec. 1845 - a bit out of sequence - followed by English Anecdotes of the American Revolution, which comes from The Olden Times out of Pittsburg, and the article runs from page 360 to page 367 and discusses General Burgoyne, Lafayette, John Paul Jones and other figures of the American Revolution. The last two leafs of text have a poem called "Memory, from Lamartine", which seems like a long epitaph, and the article about Dickens and The Institution of the Society of Cincinnati seem to have a lot of oomph to them. The spine reads "Sargent, Miscellaneous Papers", and we believe this is not referring to John Singer Sargent, the noted artist and painter, but to Winthrop Sargent (1723 - 1820), a Federalist politician, army officer, surveyor, first secretary of the Northwest Territory, and governor of the Mississippi Territory. His papers are located at the Massachusetts Historical Society, as well as the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus, Ohio, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and the Burton Library in Detroit, Michigan. The North American Review (NAR) was the first literary magazine in the United States. It was founded in Boston in 1815 by journalist Nathan Hale and others and published continuously until 1940; it stayed inactive until it was revived at Cornell College in Iowa under Robert Dana in 1964. Since 1968, the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls has been home to the Review. In its first few years NAR published poetry, fiction, and miscellaneous essays on a bimonthly schedule, but in 1820, it became a quarterly. NAR's editors and contributors included literary and political New Englanders such as John Adams, William Cullen Bryant, Richard Henry Dana Sr., Edward Everett, John Lothrop Motley, and Daniel Webster. Between 1862 and 1872, its co-editors were James Russell Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton. Henry Adams also served as an editor later on. Although the Review did not publish fiction very often, it serialized The Ambassadors by Henry James. Since 1968 its contributors have included Margaret Atwood, Eldridge Cleaver, Joyce Carol Oates, David Rabe, Kurt Vonnegut, and many others. Samuel Latham Mitchell Barlow (1826 - 1889) was a corporate lawyer and art collector from New York City who sold off his art collection in 1890. The fold-out at the rear is a handwritten and hand-drawn document about the Society of Cincinnati and the Albion Knight. The fold-out is tipped in near the last blank leaf, and at the top of the leaf, it says, in someone's small quill-pen writing, "In the article on the Cincinnati in this volume (page 275), Plantagenet's book is so rare that I ran off the Order." The document has a coat of arms with an elaborate ring and smaller rings with a noble's picture in one and a coat of arms in the other, and a small hand-written note at the bottom says "Playden's Arms - True virtue mounted aloft in Honor high, In a Serene Conscience as clear as Skie … Companion's Arms … All power on life and death, the Sword and Crown, On Gospels Truth shine Honor and Renown", and below that is says "The Order Medall, and Riban of the Albion Knight on the Conversion of 23 Kings their Support". Pages 274 and 275 of the Society of the Cincinnati say "The only account we have of 'The Albion Knights of the Conversion of the Twenty-three Indian Kings' is in the less apocryphal than rare description of the Province of New Albion by Beauchamp Plantagenet, printed in the year 1648. According to him, Sir Edmund Plowden, the Governor of New Albion, (which is supposed to have existed somewhere in the neighborhood of Salem, New Jersey,) was created by the king Earl Palatine thereof … Who were the knights of the Conversion of Albion, and what were the means by which they were to accomplish their ostensible work of converting the twenty-three kings who happened to be seated in their vicinity, we are left at a loss to guess. But, as we fortunately possess an engraving of their 'Order, Medall, and Riban,' our readers may extract some information from our description." We are left at a loss to understand all that, but the Albion knights were an ancient order of knights from the Echnida city of Albion who were dedicated to the Mobian goddess Aurora, and possibly like the Knights Templar, who were a large group of devout Christians during the medieval era sworn to protect European travelers visiting sites in the Holy Land. We shall leave the rest to the reader. The book measures 9 x 6 1/4 in. wide, with tight binding and a great spine. There's light rubbing on the bands and on the heel and crown of the spine, light rubbing and scratches on the leather, and wear at the tips, and the pages and text are relatively clean, with occasional brown spots here and there. It was difficult for us to judge how to price the book, but NAR articles and reviews from 1853 to 1855 go for $15 to $65 apiece, depending on the article and its contents; we also took into account the rarity of the reviews and the Albion Society document at the rear of the book, and these are also great archives for anyone who wants to know more about Dickens and Bleak House at the time it was written - the review was written the same year that Bleak House was published. #67 #7090