[Rarebooks] FS: O.W. Holmes THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE with letter and INSCRIBED by Holmes in 1888 to star Harvard baseball player

[Charles Agvent]

One of many interesting 19th Century American and British Literary items 
on our website: http://www.charlesagvent.com including signed pieces by 
William Wordsworth, Mark Twain, and many others.

[HOLMES, Oliver Wendell]. THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE. EVERY MAN 
HIS OWN BOSWELL. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1888. 
Forty-Ninth Edition. Octavo (5" x 7-1/2") in original gilt-decorated 
green cloth. A Grolier American 100 book. This copy INSCRIBED and SIGNED 
by the author on the front blank: "Harold C. Ernst/with the kind regards 
of/Oliver Wendell Holmes./August 7th 1888." Laid in is an AUTOGRAPH 
LETTER SIGNED from the author to Dr. Ernst dated 28 February 1891 
thanking him for a lecture he sent to Holmes and asking Ernst to keep 
him informed of the progress in the new department in which he is 
involved. In full: "I am much obliged to you for your interesting 
Lecture which I sat down and read as soon as I received it. Therefore 
you should continue to keep us all informed from time to time of the 
progress making in this wonderful new department of science to which you 
are directing yourself." Holmes may be referring to a meeting of the New 
York Academy of Medicine on 16 October 1890 when Ernst spoke on the 
rabies virus and vaccination. (Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux developed 
the first rabies vaccine in1885.) Apparently a copy that was once owned 
by Holmes himself as his bookplate is on the front pastedown. Laid in is 
a 1980 receipt from a bookseller selling each of these items separately 
for one hundred and fifty dollars each. Contents clean; mild rubbing to 
spine tips. Near Fine.

Dr. Harold C. Ernst was first a star pitcher on the baseball team at 
Harvard and later a professor of bacteriology and pathology at Harvard 
Medical School. In 1919 he was the first recipient in America of the 
Gold-Headed Cane Award.         $1,500.00

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