Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
HOLMES JR., Oliver Wendell. SPEECHES. Little, Brown & Company, Boston, 1891.
Price: US$500.00 + shipping
Description: Very Good (some wear & soil covers & few small spots to rear cover; contents clean & tight). An interesting copy of a scarce book. 8vo., printed tan boards; 55 pages First Edtion. Signed on the top of the title page by Civil War officer Charles Lawrence Peirson. Charles Lawrence Peirson [1834-1920] studied engineering at the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he volunteered for service and was commissioned first lieutenant and adjutant of the Twentieth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. In the first engagement of the regiment, Oct. 20,1861, at Ball's Bluff on the Potomac River, he was taken prisoner and sent to Libby Prison, Richmond, where he was confined until late in the following January. He shared in the distinguished record of his regiment, including the battles from Yorktown to Malvern Hill, and served on the staff of General Dana and that of General Sedgwick. In August, 1862, he became lieutenant colonel of the Thirty-Ninth Massachusetts Volunteers, and in July, 1864, colonel of that regiment, taking part in the operations of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Petersburg and the Weldon Railroad, where he was severely wounded. In March, 1865, he was commissioned brevet brigadier general United. In 1865 he retired because of wounds and disability. He became a merchant in wholesale pig iron and coke (Stevenson & Peirson, Boston, 1865; later C. L. Peirson). He was one of the sons of Abel Lawrence Peirson, surgeon of Salem, Mass.
Seller: Antic Hay Books, Asbury Park, NJ, U.S.A.
HOLMES, Oliver Wendell, Jr.. Speeches. Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, 1891.
Price: US$850.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First edition. Original printed papercovered boards. Toning on the spine and extremities, corners rubbed, about very good. Small Autograph Note Initialed tipped to the front fly: "N.P. Hallowell Esq. Nat'l Bank of Commerce, Sears Bldg. Boston from O.W.H.Jr." Important volume of speeches by the author of *The Common Law* and longtime Supreme Court Justice. Reportedly Theodore Roosevelt nominated Holmes to the Court at least in part because he had been impressed with his speeches.
Seller: Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc. ABAA, Gloucester City, NJ, U.S.A.
Price: US$2500.00 + shipping
Description: Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1891. 1st ed. Presentation Copy Inscribed by Holmes Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. [1841-1935]. Speeches. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1891. [v], 55 pp. Octavo (8-1/4" x 5-1/2"). Original cloth, title in gilt to front board, top-edge gilt, deckle fore and bottom-edges. Light soiling and some discoloration to boards, spine darkened, rubbing to extremities with some wear to spine ends and corners, light toning to interior, faint dampstaining to upper corner of text block and rear board, light foxing to a few leaves. Presentation inscription from Holmes, clipped from shipping envelope, tipped-in to front free endpaper. Book housed in a custom clamshell box, quarter morocco over cloth, raised bands and gilt title to spine. $2,500. * First edition. The inscription reads: "Mrs. Hill/ From the Author." Holmes published two subsequent editions of this work, adding later speeches, but the 1891 version is the most elegantly printed of the three. Holmes dedicated these "chance utterances of faith and doubt" to "a few friends who will care to keep them." One of those friends was Mrs. Caroline Hill, who acknowledged the gift in an October 21, 1891 letter to Holmes. She also expressed thanks "for intellectual suggestion in the old time & more for your interest in my boy in these days." That boy, Arthur Dehon Hill, became a lawyer, a professor of law at Harvard and a member of the State Street firm of Hill, Barlow Goodale & Wiswall. Copies of the first edition of Speeches were sealed in shipping envelopes. Holmes inscribed the envelopes of copies intended for presentation and, in many cases, added names of recipients at a later date. This seems to be the case with Mrs. Hill's copy: "Mrs. Hill" is written in pencil in a large hand over a flourish; "From the Author" is in a small hand in ink. A copy of Hill's letter and a brief biography of Arthur Hill are enclosed in a folder in the clamshell box. This volume includes several of Holmes's memorable addresses, such as his 1886 lecture at Harvard on "The Profession of Law," his 1895 Memorial Day address at Harvard, "A Soldier's Faith," as well as speeches on John Marshall and "The Puritan."
Seller: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., ABAA ILAB, Clark, NJ, U.S.A.