January 2023 Catalogue

60 Great Books - 15 - Bauman Rare Books “This Is By Far The Best Book Ever Written About America”: First Editions In English Of Both Parts Of Democracy In America, With Scarce Folding Map 13. TOCQUEVILLE, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by Henry Reeve. London, 1835, 1840. Four volumes. Volumes I-II: Octavo, contemporary three-quarter brown calf; Volumes III-IV: Octavo, late 19thcentury three-quarter brown morocco gilt, matching clamshell boxes. $60,000. First editions in English of both parts of Tocqueville’s influential analysis of American democracy—“one of the most important texts in political literature” (PMM)—with scarce folding map colored in outline. Democracy in America is “the first systematic and empirical study of the effects of political power on modern society” (Nisbet). Commissioned by the French government, Democracy in America is the result of Tocqueville’s 1831-32 tour of the United States to examine the American penal system. The first part of the work was published in French in 1835 and the second part in 1840; the present English editions were issued in the same years and precede the American editions of each part. Volume I with folding map and half title. Volume II bound without half title. Howes T278, 279. Sabin 96062, 96063. Volumes I-II with armorial bookplates, small bookseller embossed stamps. Volumes III-IV with small binder inkstamps of “W. Worsfold. London.” Volumes I-II with mere trace of foxing, small bit of archival tape reinforcement to inner verso of folding map, Volumes III-IV fine. An exceptional copy. “One of the few treatises on the philosophy of politics which has risen to the rank of a classic... The more one reads Tocqueville, the more admiration does one feel for his acuteness, for the delicacy of his analysis, for the elegant precision of his reasonings, for the limpid purity of his style; above all for his love of truth and the elevation of his views”—James Bryce

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