Publisher's Synopsis
From the NOTE:
This is a complete edition of "Sketches from the Civil War in North America: 1861, '62, '63." Many other edition contain unnecessary blank pages which have been removed, thus helping to keep cost down in the production of this book.
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From the EDITOR'S PREFACE:
IT was hoped that this scarce and very interesting collection of etchings would have been published nearly a year ago: but delays encountered in searching for (supposed) additional plates have delayed the matter until now.
Mr. Sabin, in his "Dictionary of Books relating to America" (New York, 1869, Vol. 2, No. 5709) notes:
"BLADA, V. (pseudonym for A. J. Volck) Sketches from the Civil War in North America, 1861-'62-'63. By V. Blada. London, 1863. Quarto.
(A series of forty-five sketches, chiefly of scenes in the Confederate Army, really published in Baltimore. Only twelve copies were struck off for friends, when the plates were destroyed for fear of exposing the artist, who is a German dentist in Baltimore)."
The catalogue of the Library of Congress says: "The original sketches, thirty in number were drawn, etched and printed in an edition of two hundred sets for subscribers by Dr. Adalbert Johan Volck of Baltimore. One plate, "Meeting of the Southern emissaries and Lincoln" (at Hampton Roads, February 3, 1865) was afterwards lost. An edition of forty-five plates, (the original thirty and fifteen additional, by the same artist, was also published (London 1863)."
But my very long and careful search, here and abroad, has failed to find more than the thirty plates I here reproduce (I am told two others are in Richmond, but that the owner will not allow their reproduction-and most of the few sets which have been sold at auction had but twenty-nine).
