[Rarebooks] FS: Theodore Roosevelt INSCRIBED to Jacob Riis "the best American I ever knew"

[Charles Agvent]

ROOSEVELT, Theodore (Teddy ROOSEVELT). THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. AN ACCOUNT 
OF THE BIG GAME OF THE UNITED STATES AND ITS CHASE WITH HORSE HOUND, AND 
RIFLE Inscribed to the Best American He Ever Knew. New York & London: G. 
P. Putnam's Sons, (1893). First Edition. Small quarto (6" x 9-1/4") in 
the original gilt-decorated cream cloth with brown lettering on the 
front cover; xvi, 472 pages. Illustrated with a frontispiece plate, 
drawings at the chapter heads and tails, and 23 full-page plates by A. 
B. Frost, Henry Sandham, J. Carter Beard, Frederick Remington, and Harry 
Eaton. This trade edition preceded the limited edition of 200 copies, 
per a "Notice" that is tipped in before the frontispiece announcing that 
the limited edition is in preparation. A monumental Association Copy 
INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the front endpaper: "To my beloved 
friend,/Jacob A. Riis;/may you enjoy the/northwoods as much as I/enjoyed 
the great plains/& the Rockies!/Theodore Roosevelt/July 1901." The 
number "14" has been inserted after the word "July," possibly by 
Roosevelt. Laid in is a pass made out to Riis for a Roosevelt Reception 
aboard the U.S. Revenue Steamer Androscoggin on 18 June 1910. Of Jacob 
Riis, his lifelong friend, Roosevelt remarked in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY: "I 
am tempted to call [him] the best American I ever knew." In 1904 Riis 
published a biography of his good friend titled THEODORE ROOSEVELT: THE 
CITIZEN. Covers soiled and marked, tight. Spine darkened, gilt still 
strong, with some chipping at the spine tips. Good or better and an 
Association Copy of the first order.

Jacob Riis, among the most dedicated advocates for America's oppressed 
and downtrodden, arrived in New York from his native Denmark at the age 
of 21 in 1870. A pioneer in photojournalism, Riis photographed and wrote 
about the slums and tenements of a New York in the dawn of a new 
century. Riis came to Roosevelt's attention through his 1890 book HOW 
THE OTHER HALF LIVES. As Commissioner of the New York City Police 
Department, Roosevelt accompanied Riis on his evening travels through 
the slums and witnessed firsthand the inhumane conditions endured by 
many of New York's inhabitants. In his 1901 book MAKING OF AN AMERICAN, 
Riis wrote of Roosevelt: "It could not have been long after I wrote HOW 
THE OTHER HALF LIVES that he came to the Evening Sun office one day 
looking for me. I was out and he left his card merely writing on the 
back of it that he had read my book and had 'come to help'. That was 
all, and it tells the whole story of the man. I loved him from the day I 
first saw him; nor ever in all the years that have passed has he failed 
of the promise made then. No one ever helped as he did. For two years, 
we were brothers on Mulberry Street." Roosevelt, in turn, wrote of Riis 
after his death: "It is difficult for me to write of Jacob Riis only 
from the public standpoint. He was one of my truest and closest friends. 
I have ever prized the fact that once, in speaking of me, he said, 
'since I met him he has been my brother.' I have not only admired and 
respected him beyond measure, but I have loved him dearly ... and I 
mourn him as if he were one of my own family." (#016941) $20,000

https://www.charlesagvent.com/pages/books/016941/theodore-roosevelt-teddy-roosevelt/the-wilderness-hunter-an-account-of-the-big-game-of-the-united-states-and-its-chase-with-horse-hound

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