[Rarebooks] fa: LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND - 12 vols. in Fine Morrell Bindings 1844

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, November 7. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/3t6zaky8

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Agnes Strickland: Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest; with Anecdotes of Their Courts, now first published from official records and other authentic documents, private as well as public. London: Henry Colburn, 1844-48. First and "new" editions. Twelve volumes (complete), 8vo (20 cm), bound in three-quarter navy blue polished calf (by Morrell), spines tooled and lettered in gilt, top page edges gilt, marbled endpapers; with extra engraved title-pages, engraved frontispieces and plates.

Vols. I-V are "new editions, with corrections and additions"; vols. VI-XII are first editions. Spines lightly sunned, occasional light rubbing and edge-wear; contents with some browning and spotting to the frontispieces and engraved titles, occasional scattered spots to the text, otherwise clean and sound. firmly bound. A handsome set.

Front free-endpapers of vols. I and III with the ownership signature of Caroline D. Phillips, "June 1923, Highover." Caroline Phillips, née Drayton, was the "well-traveled and well-read" wife of diplomat William Phillips, who served under both Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as well as Woodrow Wilson, and saw high-level service during World War II as ambassador to Italy, personal representative of FDR in India, special advisor to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, etc. A serious bibliophile, Caroline established an extensive and well-appointed library at Highover, the Italianate mansion she and her husband built in North Beverly, Mass., on an estate designed by Frederick Law Olmstead. The house burned to the ground in 1968 (dramatic photos of "Highover engulfed in flames" on the Historic Beverly website evoke the fate of Manderley in Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca) and the estate is now part of the J. C. Phillips Nature Preserve. In happier days, Caroline inscribed on the front endpaper of vol. I: "Caroline D. Phillips from John Phillips. These books were bought for me by John with some of his pay when serving in the English Army in 1915-16 in France." This is presumably her brother-in-law John Charles Phillips, doctor, naturalist and environmentalist, for whom the J. C. Phillips Nature Preserve is named. Loosely laid in to the volume is a visiting card bearing the embossed Seal of the United States and the hand-written name "Mr. Frederick Ackert," possibly another member of the diplomatic service.