Allen, A. B.; Allen, R. L. [editors]. The American Agriculturalist ; designed to Improve the Planter, the Farmer, the Stockbreeder, and the Horticulturalist (Volume I and II). New York: Saxton & Miles, 1842-1843. [11706]
Two years bound together in a handsome clean binding, sheep spine & corners, black leather spine title label in gilt, green & blue marbled boards, the slightest signs of edge-wear, 10 x 7 inches, tight. 384 + 376 pages, foxing - some dark. 12 nos. in each year, for 24 issues in this bound volume, with an index for each year. Illustrated. Very good. Hardcover.
Richard Lamb Allen (1803-1869), and his brother Anthony B. Allen (1800-1892). They were born on a small farm in Westfield, Massachusetts, and in the early 1830's they moved to Buffalo, NY, and area of booming agricultural production due to the opening of the Erie Canal. There they opened an agricultural supply store and amassed a small fortune due to both the success of the venture and to speculating in the emerging land markets. The Panic of 1837 brought their endeavors to ruin, and yet, bolstered by their knowledge gained and the vast increase in agricultural production in New York State and elsewhere, they moved to New York City and began to publish The American Agriculturalist. They produced the journal in the smaller size of royal octavo (other agricultural papers were sized quarto) specifically in hopes that their subscribers would have them bound for posterity. This is an example of that successful marketing angle.
The journal was a success, and "has long been recognized by historians as one of the most significant farming publications of the nineteenth-century United States." - Stephen Mandravelis, The American Agriculturalist: Art and Agriculture in the United States' First Illustrated Farming Journal, 1843-78; published in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, Volume 20, Issue 3, Autumn 2021.
"Few if any of the hundreds of agricultural periodicals which have been published for longer or shorter terms in the United States have had more important careers than the American Agriculturalist...it reached what was perhaps the most distinguished position ever held by an American agricultural journal...At the end of its first year it boasted a 'fair quota' of subscribers from every state and territory, and its patronage was widespread throughout its subsequent history..." - Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741-1850.
The brothers Allen sold the periodical to Orange Judd in 1856. All early volumes published by the Allens are scarce.
