Beschreibung:

ADAMS, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams . Washington, D.C.: [Privately Printed for the Author,] 1907. 2 o. Original blue cloth, morocco lettering piece (hinges cracked, some light wear at extemities). Provenance : Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924), U.S. Representative and Senator, historian (presentation inscription; Tiffany & Co. bookplate; autograph note on front flyleaf beneath clipping from the London Spectator , a letter by Morton Frewen and Shane Leslie describing Adams's death and funeral) - Carter Burden. FIRST EDITION, A SUBERB PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY ADAMS TO HENRY CABOT LODGE on the front free endpaper: "For H. Cabot Lodge with the regards of Henry Adams April, 1907." According to Merle Johnson (1942) only 100 copies were printed, but BAL cites H.D. Cater, editor of Adams's correspondence (1947), stating that the edition comprised only 40 copies. AN IMPORTANT ASSOCIATION: It is safe to say that at the turn of the century the close friendship of Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay, Henry Cabot Lodge and Henry Adams constituted one of Washington D.C.'s strongest centers of power. Adams had met Lodge after Charles Eliot Norton had persuaded Adams to leave Washington to join the faculty of Harvard in 1870. Lodge later recalled how he "stumbled" into Adams's class as a sophomore: "I found myself," he wrote in his memoirs, "caught up by a strong interest... For the first time I got a glimpse of what education might be..." For work completed under Adams's tutelage, Lodge earned the very first Ph.D. awarded by Harvard in 1876. At the time of this inscription, Lodge was a member of the Senate. Presenting it to him after Congress adjourned in early April, Adams wrote to Lodge, "After running your pen through anything that seems to you personally objectionable, return the volume to me." Adams wrote similarly to other recipients, sometimes calling the edition "proof sheets." A paucity of inscribed copies of The Education exist, perhaps due to Adams's consideration of the work as a proof awaiting revision. While still a Senator, Lodge became President of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1916, a position he assumed after the death of Adams's brother Charles Francis Adams wrote to Lodge to authorize a posthumous edition of The Education . All royalties were to go to the Society. He enclosed a corrected copy of the 1907 edition and a manuscript titled "Editor's Preface," to which he affixed the initials "H.C.L." Lodge was puzzled by Adams's attribution, but the 1918 trade edition and all subsequent editions carry Lodge's inititals beneath the "Editor's Preface." This copy of Adams's masterpiece certainly is one of the finest association copies in existence. BAL 32.