Stokes, I. N. Phelps The iconography of Manhattan Island 1498-1909 (v. 6)

(New York :  Robert H. Dodd,  1915-1928.)

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X                THE ICONOGRAPHY OF MANHATTW ISLAND

photostats of documents preserved in other cities and states, as well as abroad.

The Index is another part of the work in which the author has had but little
part, although he accepts full responsibility for the principles and method under¬
lying its somewhat unusual arrangement. Unfortunately, these principles have
not been always rightly interpreted. Now that it has been completed, he is deeply
conscious of its short-comings, the most obvious and regrettable of which
are the omission of many items of real significance, and the inclusion—often
the over-emphasis—of items of not even secondary importance, and perhaps
the least obvious, a frequent failure to bring out subtleties in the text. Many
of these faults he now realizes were inevitable, in an index not prepared by
the author himself—an index covering so diversified a subject, and one treated
from a point of view in which the standards adopted for the inclusion and ex¬
clusion of material differ radically from those followed by most histories. He
can only hope that it will prove a little more helpful than most of the indexes
which have been consulted in the preparation of the Iconography.

It was the author's intention to include among the illustrations in the final
volume a reproduction of the large map of "Tracts and Farms, with Street
Changes, County of New York," completed in 1917, by the Register's Office,
under the direction of Judge James P. Davenport, but as most of the infor¬
mation shown on this valuable map, and in addition much new information,
has been included on the Map of the Dutch Grants, the Landmark Map, and
the Map of the Original Grants and Farms, taken collectively, it has, on the
whole, seemed best not to anticipate the publication, at a more adequate scale,
of the Register's Office map.

The author greatly regrets that it proved impossible to examine for the
Iconography the splendid collection of Clinton correspondence purchased by
Mr. Clements in 1925 and now preserved in the William L. Clements Library
at the University of Michigan. A summary of these documents, which are
known as "The Headquarters Papers of the British Army in America during
the War of the American Revolution," will be found in the Addenda under
the date of May 11, 1778.

The illustrations in this volume deserve a word of appreciation. The colo-
type plates were made by Max Jaffe, of Vienna, from photographs taken in
New York by Arthur Jaffe.

I. N. Phelps Stokes
New York,
June, 1928.
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