Item #3604 Thirteen Author Collections of the Nineteenth Century and Five Centuries of Familiar Quotations [SIGNED ASSOCIATION COPY]. Carroll A. Wilson, Jean C. S. Wilson, David A. Randall, Louisa A. Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Washington Irving, James Russell Lowell, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau.
Thirteen Author Collections of the Nineteenth Century and Five Centuries of Familiar Quotations [SIGNED ASSOCIATION COPY]
Thirteen Author Collections of the Nineteenth Century and Five Centuries of Familiar Quotations [SIGNED ASSOCIATION COPY]
Thirteen Author Collections of the Nineteenth Century and Five Centuries of Familiar Quotations [SIGNED ASSOCIATION COPY]
Thirteen Author Collections of the Nineteenth Century and Five Centuries of Familiar Quotations [SIGNED ASSOCIATION COPY]
Thirteen Author Collections of the Nineteenth Century and Five Centuries of Familiar Quotations [SIGNED ASSOCIATION COPY]
Thirteen Author Collections of the Nineteenth Century and Five Centuries of Familiar Quotations [SIGNED ASSOCIATION COPY]
Thirteen Author Collections of the Nineteenth Century and Five Centuries of Familiar Quotations [SIGNED ASSOCIATION COPY]

Thirteen Author Collections of the Nineteenth Century and Five Centuries of Familiar Quotations [SIGNED ASSOCIATION COPY]

New York: Privately Printed by Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950. First (and only) Edition. Hardcover with loosely laid-in items. A Very Good + to Near Fine copy of the first edition, first and only printing, of this excellent list of works once held by famed collector Carroll A. Wilson, together with Wilson's collection of works containing quotations of famous persons, this being published after the great collector's death in 1947. This set lacks its orginal glassine dust jackets and the original slipcase but COMES TOGETHER WITH AN ORIGINAL of Carroll A. Wilson's 1937 Christmas Greetings (sent by Wilson), printed on a single sheet of elegant paper measuring just under sixteen inches high and ten inches wide folded once horizontally and then once vertically to make a booklet measuring seven and fifteen sixteenth (7 15/16) inches high by five (5) inches wide and which presents within a facsimilie Thomas Hardy's Christmas Poem "The Oxen" and a facsimilie of a letter from Thomas Hardy regarding Christmas and Francis Francillon, a fellow-writer with Hardy for Cornhill magzine, a person for whom Hardy procured a Civil List Pension (as stated on the booklet's rear face). FURTHER TOGETHER WITH a machine copy of an unsigned letter to Carroll A. Wilson's widow from Henry Allen Moe dated September 29, 1950. The letter's main body beings: "Carroll is in my mind always but during the past two months he has been with me more closely than ever. The reasons are two." The letter then details the reasons, which include matters that reveal Wilson's character, important connections, and kindness. ADDITIONALLY, a second machine-copy of a signed letter from Carroll A. Wilson's widow (his second wife), Jean C. S. Wilson, addressed to Henry Allen Moe beginning "Dear Mr. Moe:" In the letter, she notes that she is pleased that Moe is ...going to write a piece about Carroll for the Oxonian..." and enclosing copies of the "poems that were read at Carroll's service". She notes that "One was a sonnet by Butler and the other a selection from Snow-Bound. The sonnet...represents Carroll's intellectual belief about death, and the Whitter his emotional feeling about it." Machine-made copies of both are included -- perhaps the very copies the Widow Wilson sent to Moe, but that conjecture is not verifiable. The set is number 7 (handwritten in blue ink) and the Limitation Notice states "Of this book, 375 copies have been printed by The Anthoensen Press, Portland, Maine, of which three hundred and fifty copies will be for sale. No. 7" [with the "7" being handwritten in blue ink]. Volume I's front free endpaper is inscribed and signed by Jean C. S. Wilson as follows: "For Mr. Moe // With /kindest regards // Jean C. S. Wilson // September 23, 1950", and so it appears that this copy was one of the 25 copies withheld from sale. Thus, in consideration thereof and of the ORIGINAL INSCRIPTION and in further consideration of the items loosely laid in and CARROLL A. WILSON'S CONNECTION TO HENRY ALLEN MOE (see below) THIS COPY DISTINGUISHES ITSELF FROM OTHER COPIES FOUND FOR SALE. [NOTE: The set's inscribee, Henry Allen Moe, served as the first director of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was president of the American Philosophical Society from 1959 to 1970. the Principal Administrator of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation from its founding in 1925 to his retirement in 1963. Some of the first fellows chosen by Dr. Moe included the Poet Stephen Vincent Benét, the composer Aaron Copland, the choreographer Martha Graham, and the photographer Edward Weston. Notably, Carroll A. Wilson, as an attorney, served as General Counsel of the Foundation. The New York Times, in its Obituary of Henry Allen Moe stated: "While in command of a Navy destroyer he suffered severe injuries when a boom collapsed. From his hospital bed, he sent an application for a Rhodes scholarship that so impressed Carroll Wilson, a New York bibliographer, former Rhodes scholar and lawyer, that he went to the hospital to visit the applicant and obtained a scholarship for him." Some details of this account are set forth in Moe's letter to Jean C. S. Wilson.] IN SHORT, THIS IS A WONDERFUL AND REMARKABLE ASSOCIATION COPY, AND WE THINK IT TO BE A REASONALBLE ASSUMPTION THAT WILSON'S 1937 CHRISTMAS GREETING DESCRIBED ABOVE WAS SENT OR DELIVERED BY CARROLL A. WILSON TO HENRY ALLEN MOE. A WONDERFUL ASSOCIATION COPY AND RARE INDEED. Very Good +. Item #3604

Price: $850.00

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