We found the book on the left when we were hunting for old things last weekend. It's so beautiful, and in better condition than it looks in the photo. Anyway, I bought it because, in addition to the hilarious and preachy forward (which hopes that "savages" in foreign lands can use it as primer to one day better themselves), it has nice black and white line art illustrating nearly every lesson, from vocabulary to verbs. Imagine my surprise when the book on the right came to me (as a surprise present from Josiah) just a few days later! It's a new (to me, anyway) book from Chronicle, and is it ever lovely. And it is bursting with the most beautiful illustrations...as Chronicle's website says: "over 1,500 engravings that originally graced the pages of Webster's dictionaries in the 19th century"
When I uploaded my photos of the pages, it was difficult for me to distinguish between the two, except from the tattered pages! Here are a few from Picture Teaching...I love these that have little "labels" - one on each item illustrated:
Oh, that chart on the left below...be still my heart!
And here are a few favorite pages from the utterly exhaustive Pictorial Webster's:
This is my favorite page thus far, but that might just be because it's near the center of the book, and so my volume has an easy time falling open to that page. But come on! Those three monkeys that the top? And the molars aren't too shabby, either.
I'm excitedly readying all the prints from the Oddfellow's series...they'll be making their way into the shop tomorrow (Friday)!
See you soon!