"MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY": FIRST APPEARANCE OF JULIA WARD HOWE'S FAMOUS POEM, BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC, 1862

HOWE, Julia Ward. "Battle Hymn of the Republic." IN: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume IX. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862. Octavo, period-style full blue morocco gilt, raised bands, marbled endpapers. $2250.

First printing of Howe's famous Civil War poem, written the morning after she heard Union soldiers singing "John Brown's Body," in the February 1862 issue of Atlantic Monthly, bound together in one volume with the issues from the first half of the year.

"I awoke in the grey of the morning, and as I lay waiting for dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to entwine themselves in my mind, and I said to myself, 'I must get up and write these verses, lest I fall asleep and forget them!' So I sprang out of bed and in the dimness found an old stump of a pen, which I remembered using the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper." Perhaps best known for having written the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe was also a devoted abolitionist and social reformer. "No movement or 'Cause' in which women were interested… could be launched without her. Her courage, her incisiveness and quickness of repartee, her constructive power, the completeness of her conviction accompanied by a balance of mind, and a sense of humor that disarmed irritation made her the greatest of woman organizers" (ANB). Her stirring poetic hymn was set to the tune of "John Brown's Body," which Howe had heard soldiers singing during her visit to a Union Army camp. She was taken with its strong marching beat and wrote her famous poem the following morning. The hymn "aroused President Lincoln 'like a trumpet blast,' and became his best loved marching song" (Owen, 143). This is the entire Volume IX of The Atlantic Monthly in which the Battle Hymn of the Republic first appeared, in February (on page 145).

Occasional, mostly marginal foxing to text; beautifully bound.