3 vols.

William K. Bixby’s LARGE (circa 1890-1903) FOLIO ALBUM (18.25 x 13.25 inches, bulking 2.5 inches) containing 124 large commercially vended European travel photographs (real photographic prints) neatly mounted four to each card-stock leaf (2 per page), plus 3 additional (privately supplied?) photographs of luxuriously furnished rooms on a GILDED AGE OCEAN-GOING STEAM YACHT (which, judging from a framed portrait of Augusta Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstrom visible in one of the rooms, might be German Kaiser Wilhlem II’s first steam yacht “Hohenzollern,” which he renamed “Kaiseradler” in 1892 when he launched “Hohenzollern II”). Orig. 3/4 morocco over brown cloth, with W. K. Bixby’s (first?) relatively rudimentary un-signed black-ink OCTOPUS bookplate (book no. 1367 added in manuscript)* affixed to front pastedown endpaper. These photographs depict outdoor scenes (cities, harbors, etc.), famous buildings (exteriors and interiors), and important works of art which the Bixbys saw in Venice, Verona, Milan, Nice, Monaco and Monte Carlo. Two are colored, one black and white, the rest sepia. The private steam yacht photographs are sepia prints. CONDITION: Spine leather entirely gone, leaving behind underlying sturdy cloth wholly intact (hence, binding wholly stable), extant exterior leather dry and chaffed; internally dusty in places, but mostly very clean, with all photographs in excellent condition. *This bookplate of Bixby’s appears to have been superseded by the finer one engraved for him by E. D. French in or soon after 1904.

McMillan, Eliza Northrup (1845-1915). Letters of Lizzie McMillan. Cambridge: Printed at the Riverside Press, 1902. “In compliance with the request of friends, the writer has caused an edition of one hundred copies of these letters to be printed for private distribution.” Octavo, (iv), 266 pp., orig. brown-cloth-backed gray boards, printed paper spine label. European, Middle Eastern, Egyptian, and Asia Minor travel letters mostly addressed to the writer’s father, October 1889 to June 1893. Base of spine nicked, spine-label chipped, else good to very good. According to these letters, McMillan started in France (Paris) and progressed to Florence, Rome, Castellamare, La Cava, Sicily, Athens, CONSTANTINOPLE, Budapest, Vienna, Innsbruck, Munich, Dresden, Wales, Liverpool, Norway, St. Petersburg, Moscow, then returned to Paris before crossing to London, thence to Lake Windermere, Dublin, Damper, Naples, ALEXANDRIA, CAIRO, up the Nile as far as Luxor, back to Cairo, JERUSALEM, Jenin, Nazareth (in camp), Damascus (in camp), Beirut, Alexandria again, then across the Mediterranean on Steamer “Vorwaerts”, Venice, Florence, Basle, and finally to Paris again.

Bixby, William K. NOTE-BOOK OF A TRIP TO GIBRALTAR, MADEIRA, MONACO, NICE, ALGIERS, NAPLES, POMPEII, ROME, CAIRO, LUXOR, AND ATHENS. (St. Louis): Privately Printed For the Family and Friends of W. K. Bixby, 1922. Colophon: SIXTY COPIES (ONLY) ... printed by D. B. Updike, The Merrymount Press, Boston, in January 1922. Duodecimo, 75 pp. plus colophon leaf, orig. cloth-backed printed boards, spine stamped in gilt. Unopened (uncut) copy. Spine rubbed, else very good. Was this trip influenced by WKB’s reading of his business partner William McMillan’s wife Eliza McMillan’s stories and letters on her 1890s trip to Egypt and elsewhere?

Together with a large mounted original photograph of an interior room in one of W. K. Bixby’s houses (13 Portland Place, St. Louis?), showing Elephant Tusks curving in from either side of a fireplace in a white-paneled room with the visible wall covered with horned animal heads, beneath which appear glazed fully-stocked bookshelves below the chair-rail level, an Elephant-foot waste basket, etc. Photograph approx. 9.25 x 11.5 inches mounted on 15.25 x 18.25 inch card-stock. One corner of mount (only) broken. Photo itself very good.