Foster Captain Henry (2 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Fine condition faux red leather boards with elaborately illustrated gold front cover perimeter and spine decorations, gold front cover lettering, and gold spine lettering over a black block border. Includes Editor's Comment and Acknowledgments. Major chapter headings are as follows: Wisdom; Benjamin Franklin; History; Beauty and Business. "Sometimes it seems almost futile to try to write anything new because it has all been said before - and so well said. Of course, any such defeatism must lead to a dead end of accomplishment in terms of literary effort. Fortunately for the living and those to come, there are many bright new stars on the panel of contemporary writers. They are skillfully telling the story of these eventful days and their words will be read with relish by future generations. In fact, the printed word today is so prolific, and the competition with the book, the magazine and the newspaper is so great, future generations will require anthologies in great number to know what our bright literary stars have said. In this anthology there has bee no effort to be erudite, consistent, unusual or educational. The prime purpose is to amuse by exposing the reader to many things he has read before and may wish to read again. Perhaps that poem he [or she] HAD to learn, to pass freshman English, is here. He may even enjoy rereading it under different auspices. It is not possible to include only those things that appeal to him. If he dislikes poetry in any form, we hope he will please forgive us. Some of us like the "well-turned couplet." On the other hand, there are those who love Shakespeare, but just cannot understand how his hallowed words should appear with some of the more commonplace choices that have arrived in this selection. It takes all kinds you know - and we have tried to select all kinds of literature." - excerpt from Editor's Comment.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. FOSTER, Captain Henry (1796-1831). (BAILY, Francis.) Report of the Pendulum Experiments Made by the Late Captain Henry Foster, R.N., In His Scientific Voyage in the Years 1828-1831 with a View to Determine the Figure of the Earth. London, John Weale, 1834. Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, VOL. VII. Vi, (ii), 378pp. Light ex-library copy in calf-backed cloth boards. Two bookplates on front paste down, plus slight remnants of another bookplate on front free end paper; also a 8mm library stamp on bottom of spine. That said this is a very fresh copy with reinforced hingesthis may be a contemporary binding or it was bound in a few decades afterwardsI can't tell. [++] 'There were few officers in the service whose minds could have been more highly cultivated than Foster's,' writes one of his comrades in the Arctic expedition (United Service Journal, 1835, pt. ii. pp. 834). Foster's notebook, containing all his observations since leaving Porto Bello, was stolen from his body by the canoe-men, but he left an immense mass of observations of various kinds, which the admiralty confided partly to the Royal Society and partly to the Astronomical Society. A report on the pendulum experiments of Foster was drawn up by Francis Baily, the president of the Astronomical Society, and inserted in vol. vii. of their 'Memoirs;' it was also printed by the admiralty."--DNB [++].