Comly's Reader and Book of Knowledge; with Excercises of Spelling and Defining, Intended for the Use of Schools and for Private Instruction.

Original brown boards with red spine wrap. Title, publisher info. & date on front cover, as well as small illustration - advertising on rear cover. iv, 212 ppgs. Spine worn, ends torn top and bottom; covers worn, soiled and abraded, but still legible. Title page mirrors the front cover, except small illustration has been torn/cut out. Binding loose, but still holding together. Interior lightly foxed throughout, perhaps heavier in the first few pages. Pages untrimmed. Illustrated with a small number of engravings, some of which have been crudely hand-colored. Despite condition, a scarce, early example of a mid-nineteenth century textbook. Topics include: Psalms of David, breakfast, salt, spices, early settlements of Penn., hemp, opium, hats, indigo, balloon, the polar bear, gases, etc.