FINELY BOUND FORTY-VOLUME AMERICAN STATESMAN SET

MORSE, John T., Editor. American Statesmen. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1898-1900, 1908-1917. Forty volumes. Large octavo, contemporary three-quarter dark green morocco, raised bands, marbled boards and endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut and largely unopened. $6500.

Limited large-paper edition, number 12 of only 500 sets, of this collection of biographies of the founding fathers of the United States, with frontispiece portraits, title page vignettes and numerous other engraved portraits, views, scenes and facsimiles.

The twenty-eight biographies in the first series include those of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, James Monroe, Samuel Adams, Daniel Webster, James Madison, John Adams, John Marshall and John Jay. Among the authors are Henry Cabot Lodge, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and Theodore Roosevelt. Each biography is indexed, and there is also a general index volume for the set. The second series adds works on Ulysses S. Grant, James G. Blaine and William McKinley, among others. Morse explained the idea behind this celebrated set: "The principle has been to make such a list of men in public life that the aggregation of all their biographies would give, in this personal shape, the history and the picture of the growth and development of the United States from the beginning of that agitation which led to the Revolution until the completion of that solidarity which we believe has resulted from the civil war and the subsequent reconstruction."

Morocco bindings toned to brown. An exceptionally handsome set in fine condition.