[Rarebooks] FS: Teddy Roosevelt's copy of Dickens's Pickwick

Charles Agvent agvent at erols.com
Tue Oct 23 12:49:01 EDT 2007


  [ROOSEVELT,  Theodore  (Teddy)] DICKENS, Charles.  THE  POSTHUMOUS
PAPERS  OF THE PICKWICK CLUB. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons [1912]. A
nondescript    reprint   of  one  of   Dickens's  most   loved   books
distinguished  by a superb SIGNED INSCRIPTION by the former  President
on  the first blank: "To/Leo E. Miller/with the heartiest/good  wishes
of  his/friend/Theodore Roosevelt/May 19th 1914." When Roosevelt  went
to  Africa in 1909, he took with him a small collection of books known
as  the  Pigskin Library, a present to him from his sister Corinne  of
books  bound in pigskin. Among those books were two novels by Dickens,
one of which was PICKWICK. When Roosevelt went to Brazil in late 1913,
he  brought  no  books. For his return home he purchased  fifty  books
and,  sitting  on  the deck each day, read them all  before  his  ship
reached  New York on May 19. That is the very day Roosevelt  presented
this  particular volume to Leo Miller, one of two naturalists from The
American  Museum  of Natural History who, along with  Roosevelt's  son
Kermit,  accompanied  him  on his six-month trek  through  the  Amazon
basin.  Roosevelt  seems  to have been especially fond  of  the  young
Miller  because he had literary as well as scientific interests.  When
her  brother  returned  from  this  trip  to  South  America,  Corrine
Roosevelt  Robinson  claimed  he was "a man in whom  a  secret  poison
still  lurked" who was never again "wholly free from recurrent attacks
of  the  terrible  jungle fever." Theodore Roosevelt would  die  about
five  years  later  having just turned sixty. One page with  a  closed
tear.  Housed  in  a  blue cloth chemise  in  a  black  morocco-backed
slipcase  with gilt lettering and raised bands. Very Good in  handsome
chemise and slipcase.                                         $6500.00

-- 

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Thank you.

CHARLES AGVENT
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