Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858.

Publisher: Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1928

Stock code: 48534

Price: £2,750

The “Manuscript Edition” limited to 1000 copies, each containing a leaf of Beveridge’s original working manuscript. Beveridge had a horror of mistakes and would “work over his material again and again, rewriting the entire chapter many times - a single chapter in the second volume was rewritten fifteen times - until it had taken a shape which appeared to him fairly complete…in that form he submitted it to recognized experts in the different phases of the history, asking, or rather urging them to correct misstatements of fact, or wrong inferences, or an unconscious bias of treatment.” (Preface) This scrupulous treatment of the facts of Lincoln’s life almost certainly prevented Beveridge from completing the biography before his death in 1927, but also meant that it has come to be regarded as “the first Lincoln biography to meet modern scholarly standards.” (ANB)

4 volumes, bound “at the Riverside Press” in dark blue full crushed morocco, title gilt to spines, raised bands, gilt strapwork panels to the compartments, similar panelling in gilt and blind to the boards, top-edge gilt others uncut, wide turn-ins with broad gilt fillet rules, pale-grey-blue endpapers, dark blue silk page-markers. Unopened. 4 tissue-guarded hand-coloured photographic views of the Lincoln Memorial, 4 photogravure portrait frontispieces with captioned tissue-guards, 32 other plates and maps. Leather book-ticket of Lucy Smith Battson, widow of Edward L. “Ned” Doheny, Jr. to the front free endpapers. Spines just a touch sunned, minimal shelf-wear, a very handsome set indeed.