With an early description of baseball
Glossary of supposed Americanisms
Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1859. First edition, 8vo, pp. xi, [12]-122; original brown cloth, spine faded, text foxed, else good and sound. Mencken, in his The American Language, writes: "[It] was chiefly devoted to showing that most of the 465 terms it listed were English provincialisms or archaisms, but he also listed a few words and phrases picked up in Pennsylvania. Elwyn, under ball, offered one of the early descriptions of baseball, He called it bat and ball, said that it was played in his youth, and hazarded the guess that it might be 'an imperfect form of cricket,' though calling it, in the same breath, 'a Yankee invention'." Kennedy 11394; Vancil, p. 79. Item #44368
Price: $850.00
