OP: The Market Book
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Printed for the author, New York, 1862. Hardcover. Very Good, rebacked. Signed first printing.
Thomas De Voe (1811–1892) was a trained butcher, operating his own business in New York City’s Jefferson Market (6th Ave. and Christopher St.) for nearly 50 years. As a respected member of the community, he represented butchers’ causes to the city and eventually joined the New York Historical Society to further his personal education. The NYHS encouraged him to put his expertise to page, which resulted in The Market Book (1862).
The book is a phenomenally detailed depiction of over 200 years of commerce in what is now New York City, specifically on the island of Manhattan, beginning with the West India Company store in the 1630s. De Voe’s approach goes far beyond hard facts and numbers and instead portrays the daily lives of common, working people. The emphasis, of course, is on butchers; however, the scope goes well beyond that trade.
In his description of the Broad Street Market, De Voe mentions how it was common practice for butchers to have dogs for keeping livestock in line and how their presence was a nuisance to everyone else: “butchers…super-abound in a very great number of mischievous mastiffs, bull-dogs, and other useless dogs, who not only run at coaches, horses, chaises, and cattle in the daytime, whereby much mischief has ensued, but in the night-time are left in the streets of this city, and frequently bite, tear, and kill several cows and render the passage of the inhabitants of this city…very dangerous…”
Other illustrative anecdotes include a 1796 complaint against a butcher who was tried for falsely applying a Jewish seal on his meat and others of grim public executions in market areas. The span of time De Voe covers is a particularly volatile one in US history, tangentially exposing the realities of slavery in the city and tensions leading up to the Revolutionary War. It is remarkably engaging and a tremendous asset for New York historians.
The title page states Volume I, as a second focused on Boston, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn—also indicated by the subtitle—was planned but never written as such. Instead, De Voe wrote The Market Assistant (1867), which described market wares, rather than their environment or history.
A beautifully clean first printing, printed on sturdy stock. Expertly rebacked. Signed by De Voe a front flyleaf to Shepherd Gandy, Esq., dated Christmas 1866. Housed in a custom-built clamshell case. Scarce.
