[Rarebooks] FS: INSCRIBED by O. W. Holmes: THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE with 2 Autograph Examples of the Final Stanza of "The Last Leaf"

[Charles Agvent]

One of many interesting 19th Century American and British Literary items 
on our website: http://www.charlesagvent.com including signed pieces by 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wordsworth, Mark Twain, Henry Longfellow, 
and many others with some superb pieces to be cataloged in the coming 
months.


[HOLMES, Oliver Wendell]. THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE. EVERY MAN 
HIS OWN BOSWELL. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1890. Revised 
Edition. Small octavo (3-1/4" x 5-5/8") in original flexible blue cloth. 
A Grolier American 100 book, this would be a run-of-the-mill copy but 
for the remarkable holograph additions by Holmes within. On the recto of 
the ad page before the title page announcing other titles by Holmes the 
author has handwritten the last and best known stanza of his famous poem 
"The Last Leaf"--"And if I should live to be/The last leaf upon the 
tree/In the spring,/Let them smile, as I do now,/At the old forsaken 
bough/Where I cling"--and SIGNED with his initials and the dates 1831 
and 1890 corresponding to the date of authorship and the date of the 
inscription. There is some light feathering to the ink on some of the 
words which is likely why the poem is lightly striked with an x in 
pencil and written out AGAIN by Holmes on the light yellow front 
endpaper, again in ink, and SIGNED as before. In addition, on the front 
blank between the two pages with the holograph manuscript, the author 
has INSCRIBED and SIGNED the book: Dr. W. E. Rust/with the kind regards 
of/Oliver Wendell Holmes." Some toning to the text. Neatly and recently 
rebacked retaining the original spine, the cloth clean and bright. Near 
Fine.

Dr. Rust was a surgeon operating in California in the 1850s and was 
contracted by the U.S. Government in the 1870s to work with the Apaches. 
(#015369)        $2,000.00

http://home.ptd.net/~chagvent/015369.jpg

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