[KOLLNER, Augustus].

City Sights for Country Eyes.

Item #84440

[KOLLNER, Augustus]. City Sights for Country Eyes. Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, [c. 1857]. Oblong 4to. Lithographic title page, 12 lithographic plates with facing text. Text printed in green, yellow, red and black. Publisher's brown cloth, rebacked with orig. spine laid down, in custom box with title page duplicated on upper board. Slight staining to boards. An exceptional copy. Kollner (1812-1906), a German-born artist and lithographer, and a longtime resident of Philadelphia, was well known in nineteenth-century America for his engraved views, magazine illustrations, and juvenile works. This simple picture book, part of his successful collaboration with the American Sunday School Union begun in the early 1840s and lasting until the start of the Civil War, was part of a series of "common sights" for children that Kollner began in 1850. This particular title was first published between 1854 and 1857 (Wainwright claims 1856), and the title page's ASSU address places this copy most likely in 1857. Wainwright wrote, "These books, with their delightful everyday scenes, were so popular that few have survived the hands of the children for whom they were designed." A lovely example of a nineteenth-century children's book.

Price: $8,500.00