LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCE.
[1/150 signed copies] A Personal Retrospect of American Authorship. Illustrated. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1900. Original light brown cloth with suede cover panel, printed in gilt.
"Autograph Edition" (so identified on the spine), being copy #35 of 150 copies signed by Howells -- made up of sheets of the trade edition, but in a special binding and with the insertion of the limitation leaf. Here "The Dean of American Letters" uses the turn of the century to reminisce about everybody who was anybody in American literature -- Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Hawthorne, Dana, Thoreau, Twain, Whitman, etc... Included are 72 full-page plates -- about one every four pages.
The trade copies, bound in green cloth, are relatively common today; however, these suede-paneled "Autograph Edition" copies are curiously scarce, scarcer than the 150-copy limitation would imply. This is a fine copy. Blanck 9736. Provenance: bookplate and rear endpaper 1931 inscription of Wm Hansen of Cordova, Alaska Territory. Item #15237
Price: $350.00