The American Ready Reckoner, or, Trader's, Farmer's, & Mechanic's Expeditious Calculator : in Dollars and Cents. To which is added a variety of useful tables

Baltimore: F. Lucas, Jr. 138 Market Street. Very Good. 1829. Hardcover. 170, (4) pages; Published in "fifty third year of Independence" = 1828-9. Contents clean and secure in original binding of blue paper covered boards with tan sheepskin leather spine; leather worn and chipped along spine; some superficial stains to boards. Former owner's name and date on ffep and again in ink on the front board -- "Kenneth / Cameron / Purchased 1837 / December 25th." There is also an early stamp in small capital letters with this same name under the ownership inscription on the front free endpaper. OCLC 16557980 [only at Arkansas State University] & OCLC 21748005 [only a copy in Special Collections of the Bancroft Library which lacks all pages after 134 [i.e., all of the "Rate of Wages" with its special sectional title page, the tables of foreign money, etc.] Quite scarce. Published in Baltimore by Fielding Lucas, Jr. (1781-1854) -- whose name will be most familiar to collectors of American maps and atlases. A portrait of Fielding Lucas as a young man by Thomas Sully (1808) is now preserved in the Baltimore Museum of Art -- (the collection also includes Sully's portrait of Mrs. Lucas (born Eliza M. Carrel (1788-1863)). The idea of the "ready reckoner" as a book of useful tables is an old one, going back well before the works of the prolific Daniel Fenning in the previous century. The association of Fielding Lucas with this kind of publication can be traced through a Baltimore publication with a similar title published in 1806 by Warner & Hanna, proprietors of a book-store, at no. 37, Market-Street, Baltimore. [see the copy at the American Antiquarian Society, given by Isaiah Thomas in 1826]. Fielding Lucas Jr. had his name added to the publisher's imprint of a later edition (1817) of that book (AAS, also a copy at Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore). Lucas also published artists' manuals, childrens books, a Catholic Almanac, one of the earliest American books with plates printed in colors -- and, of course, an assortment of maps and atlases. The need for the long section at the end concerning foreign money and its value in U.S. currency may be seen in light of the confusion still holding sway at the time of publication over the value of a U.S. dollar -- which according to the text on pp. 168-170 ranged from a low in some states of 4s. 6d. [South Carolina and Georgia] to as much as 8 shillings! [in New York and North Carolina]. .