Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior Rare Book Specialist at Peter Harrington.
The David Powers collection of John F. Kennedy’s speeches and manuscripts spans the statesman’s political career up to the presidency, from his first primary race in the 11th District in 1946 to the eve of nomination as president in the summer of 1960, encompassing three Congressional campaigns, two runs for the Senate, and a bid for the vice presidency.
David Francis Powers (19121998) grew up in Charlestown, Mass., the son of Irish immigrants. He served in every one of Kennedy’s political campaigns from 1946 to 1960 as one of his most important political operatives. In the White House, as Special Assistant, his duties included preparing briefings and ushering distinguished guests into the Oval office. He was Kennedy’s most intimate friend, advisor, and personal “fixer”. Kenneth O’Donnell, top aide to both JFK and Lyndon Johnson, once remarked “Outside of Bobby, President Kennedy had one really close friend and that was Dave Powers.”
Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior Rare Book Specialist at Peter Harrington.
A fascinating legal document entirely in Lincoln’s hand and showing him as the hard-working “prairie lawyer” involved in the minutiae of the law: signed three times in the main deposition and again at the foot, “Abraham Lincoln Commissioner”; also signed by Thomas Lewis – one of the patentees of the “atmospheric churn” at lower right, as witness to his own statement transcribed by Lincoln.
The document opens: “Deposition of Willis H. Johnson, and Thomas Lewis, witnesses produced, sworn, and examined on oath on the 20th day of February, in the year of our Lord one thousand, eight hundred and fifty one, at the Office of Abraham Lincoln, in Springfield, in the State of Illinois, by me Abraham Lincoln, by virtue of a commission issuing out of the Supreme Court of Judicature of the People of the State of New York, to me, Abraham Lincoln”.
This deposition is linked to a patent case that was long-winded and far from straightforward; it is discussed in some detail in Brian Dirck’s Lincoln the Lawyer: “In 1849 Lincoln was hired by John Moffett, part of a three-man partnership to market and sell an ‘atmospheric churn,’ a device that created butter more quickly than conventional churns by injecting air directly into the cream. Moffett was not the churn’s designer, that honor belonged to his partner Willis Johnson, a creative and busy Springfield inventor who also came up with new ways of processing flax and hemp, pumping water, and mixing cement. Moffett and a third party, Thomas Lewis, did the sales work, selling churns in Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Lewis racked up over 50,000 worth of sales. St. Louis had been particularly fertile ground, where he displayed the churn in front of a saloon and on the sidewalk by his hotel. Moffett’s understanding was that the partners’ arrangement called for selling the machine without him or Lewis earning any commission. He was therefore dismayed to learn that Lewis paid himself a 4,000 commission from the proceeds of his efforts”. After the court decided Lewis should pay Moffett 1,300 Lewis appealed and the case went up to the state supreme court, “which ruled that he did not need to pay Moffett anything at all. It would have been difficult for Lincoln to find a clear distinction between progressive economic development and its retardation in this case. Nor did the patent laws seem to do much for the ‘fire of genius’ behind the atmospheric churn. Willis Johnson did not get anything out of the lawsuit (he tried to bring his own case against Lewis, but failed).
The churn itself was worthless. During the appeal, the chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court marveled at Lewis’s ingenuity in earning so much money from peddling what was a dismal failure of a machine” (Chapter 4: ‘The Energy Man’, p. 89). In his deposition, Lewis states: “I am one of the patentees of what is called Johnson & Lewis’ Atmospheric Churn I, for myself and partners, did sell and transfer the principal part of our interest under the patent for said churn, in the year 1848 I sold to” and then lists 35 individuals to whom transfers were made and names the territories they have rights to: “all England, all Canada, all Oregon, and all the United States excepting twenty counties in Illinois”. Thomas Lewis (b. 1808) was a native of New Jersey. He arrived in Springfield with his family in 1837, shortly after Lincoln himself had moved there. He was originally a shoemaker but accumulated some money in banking and studied law; he was admitted to the bar but his law practice seems to have been unsuccessful.
Next he tried his hand at the newspaper business and became editor and publisher of the Illinois Atlas, based in Springfield. Things were improving and he became a key figure in the foundation of Illinois State University before joining in partnership with Willis Johnson and a Lucien Adams to establish a dry goods business. He reputedly owned real estate worth 22,000, and, with Lewis and Adams, a foundry and a mill. As a substantial figure in Springfield society, Lewis would certainly have been known to Lincoln. In fact, nearly a decade earlier, in 1842, Lincoln had represented Lewis in a foreclosure suit concerning a general store that Lewis had owned, the inventory of which had been impounded. At that time Lincoln was in partnership with Stephen T. Logan. Lewis asked Lincoln to represent him and “Lincoln and Logan had to file an action against the constable to force him to release the inventory. The jury ruled for Lewis and awarded 1 in damages. Of course, the damages were unimportant. What Lewis wanted, and what Logan and Lincoln got for him, was the right to seize and sell the inventory” (Billings and Williams, eds, Abraham Lincoln, Esq.: The Legal Career of America’s Greatest President, 2010, pp. 113-14). A legal document of real immediacy from the years when Lincoln was making his reputation as “Honest Abe” in his adopted “home state” of Illinois, where, as a lawyer, “he rose to front rank” (Dictionary of American Biography).
Presented by Ben Houston of Peter Harrington Rare Books.
Rare first edition of the first volume of Das Kapital, the only one to appear in Marx’s lifetime; one of 1,000 copies printed. Two further volumes were published from his manuscripts by Engels, in 1885 and 1894 respectively.
The first volume of Das Kapital was published on 14 September 1867 in Hamburg, issued in printed wrappers. “Marx himself modestly described Das Kapital as a continuation of his Zur Kritik de politischen Oekonomie, 1859. It was in fact the summation of his quarter of a century’s economic studies, mostly in the Reading Room of the British Museum.
The Athenaeum reviewer of the first English translation (1887) later wrote: ‘Under the guise of a critical analysis of capital, Karl Marx’s work is principally a polemic against capitalists and the capitalist mode of production, and it is this polemical tone which is its chief charm’.
Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior Rare Book Specialist at Peter Harrington. First edition in Latin. Ptolemy’s treatise on astrology, the Tetrabiblos, was the most popular astrological work of antiquity and also enjoyed great influence in the Islamic world and the medieval Latin West. The translation was made from Arabic to Latin in 1138 by Plato of Tivoli, the 12th-century Italian mathematician, astronomer and translator who lived in Barcelona from 1116 to 1138. It has a commentary by Ali ibn Ridwan ibn Ali ibn Ja’far al-Misri (c.988c.1061; known in the west as Haly, or Haly Abenrudian). The work is divided into four books: the first is a defence of astrology and technical concepts, the second deals with the influences on earth (including astrological geography and weather prediction), and the third and fourth discuss the influences on individuals. The present copy confirms to the second copy mentioned in BMC, with the impression of two headings from a law book printed in red on the lower half on verso of the last page.
Presented by Ben Houston of Peter Harrington Rare Books.
First edition of Purchas his Pilgrimes, with the engraved title-page (often lacking) dated 1625, the map of Virginia in vol. IV in the 10th state according to Burden, with the whole engraved area present (often trimmed with loss). With the fourth edition of the Pilgrimage, issued concurrently as a supplement, in the usual issue with the first quire reset, the title beginning Purchas (the other setting has Purchase), and the added dedication to King Charles. The fourth edition of the Pilgrimage is usually considered the best; first published in 1613, it gives Purchas’s account of the various religions encountered throughout the world. Together, this is the desired state of the complete set of Purchas’s important collection of travel and exploration narratives from ancient times up to and including the recent accounts of Virginia by John Smith. This is a lovely set in 18th-century calf.
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