[Rarebooks] FS: Theodore Roosevelt gives a Bible to his Hometown Library

[Charles Agvent]

 From our new WINTER MISCELLANY 2012 catalog containing 65 select items 
priced from $25 to $17,500, now available at
http://www.charlesagvent.com

[ROOSEVELT, Theodore (Teddy)] TISSOT, J. James. THE OLD TESTAMENT and 
THE LIFE OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. Theodore Roosevelt Gives a Bible 
to his Hometown Library. New York: M De Brunoff Art Publisher and 
Doubleday & McClure Co, 1904 and 1899. Four folio (10-1/2" x 14") 
volumes bound in matching full green morocco with gilt lettering on the 
spines and five raised bands; silk endpapers and pastedowns; thick 
gilt-decorated morocco-bordered doublures with silk centers and 
endpapers; all edges gilt. Illustrated with numerous full-page plates in 
two states, color and black-and-white, as well as scores of color and 
black-and-white text illustrations. This beautiful edition is much 
desired for its illustrations. Here it is in a luxurious binding, and 
what makes this set exceptional is the SIGNED INSCRIPTION as President 
on the front blank of THE OLD TESTAMENT: "To/the Oyster Bay Library/with 
the regards of/Theodore Roosevelt/July 9th 1906." An outstanding 
presentation to his hometown library from a President not particularly 
prone to outward expressions of faith. Roosevelt valued the Bible: "It 
would be a great misfortune for our people if they ever lost the Bible 
as one of their habitual standards and guides in morality (OUTLOOK, 27 
May 1911, p. 223). But he valued the health of his country even more: "I 
believe in absolutely non-sectarian public schools. It is not our 
business to have the Protestant Bible or the Catholic Vulgate or the 
Talmud read in those schools (Letter to Michael Schaap, 22 February 
1915, published in THE MEMORIAL EDITION OF THE WORKS OF THEODORE 
ROOSEVELT, Volume XXIV, p. 422). Some rubbing and scratching to covers. 
Second volume of THE LIFE with about a dozen pages damaged due to 
adhesion. Very Good with a most interesting Theodore Roosevelt connection.

In his later life (he died in 1902) Tissot abandoned his usual subjects 
and turned to religious topics, treating them with a degree of 
topographical and archeological allusion. In the 1982 exhibition 
catalogue of Biblical paintings of J. James Tissot at the Jewish Museum, 
Gert Schiff pointed out that the artist "felt free to change people's 
ages, to introduce motifs that were not strictly Biblical, and in 
general to skirt the drudgery of replication. Imaginative truth, not 
reconstructed 'literal truth,' was what he was after. If he thought that 
brass instruments would add a Berliozian note to the ram's horn trumpets 
that brought down the walls of Jericho, he put them in. If he thought 
that it made better sense if Cain was twice as old as Abel, he went 
ahead. If he thought that mouth to mouth resuscitation would have been 
just the thing for Elijah when he wanted to raise the widow's son from 
the dead, he went ahead with that, too, even if it did rather take away 
from the miracle." (#016255)        $6,000.00

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-- 
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