?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(THEATER.) Ethiopian, or Smashing Niggar Songster. [wrapper title], with caption head "Ethiopian Songster." 6 hand-colored text illustrations including front wrapper. 34, [2] pages. 12mo, publisher's illustrated wrappers, moderate wear and staining; coming disbound, minor dampstaining. New York: William Mather Song Book Depository, circa 1840
This previously unrecorded songster compiles minstrel songs popularized by Thomas Dartmouth Rice (the original "Jim Crow") and others, such as "Jim Crow in London," "Zip Coon, on the Go-Ahead Principle," "The Raccoon Hunt," and more. The publisher Mather was a bookseller and patent-medicine agent at this 42 Division Street address in the 1838 New York directory, but the only other reference we find to his "Song Book Depository" was the 1840 chapbook "Tom Moore's Musical Box." Unrecorded--no other copies traced in OCLC, Shaw & Shoemaker, or at auction.
