Books and Manuscripts

From the Personal Library of President George Washington

(London): Printed by Jno. Nichols and Sold for the Society by Rivingtons, Dilly, Johnson & Hookham, (1795). First edition. Vol. 1 (no more published). 8vo. (iv), li, (1), 635 pp. From President George Washington's personal library at Mount Vernon, and with his bold signature at head half-title page. Illustrated with an engraved portrait of British King George III and two engraved plates. Presentation binding of full crimson straight-grain morocco, stamped in gilt, boards and extremities rubbed; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers. Listed in the official inventory of Washington's personal property at Mount Vernon taken by appraisers upon his death (see p. 426 in The Estate of George Washington, Deceased, Eugene Ernst Prussing, 1927); see also p. 554 in "Inventory of Washington's Library" in A Catalogue of the Washington Collection in the Boston Athenæum (1897).

A very rare book from the personal library of President George Washington, with his fine and bold signature on the half-title page. This volume was gifted to Washington while he was President of the United States by English Quaker physician Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, and was sent with Lettsom's letter of July 15, 1795, "...With some Seeds I have enclosed the Transactions of the Royal Humane Society..." (The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, Vol. 18, pp. 347-48). Lettsom (1744-1815) was born in the British Virgin Islands, educated In England, apprenticed at St. Thomas's Hospital in London, and received his medical doctorate at Leyden University in the Netherlands. He was a founding member of the Royal Humane Society, of which this volume relates. A prolific author and philanthropist, Lettsom was a promoter of public health and education in London, where he operated the city's largest medical practice at the time. In 1773 he founded the Medical Society of London as a venue for medical and scientific discussion and collaboration, was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was friends with many notable persons including Benjamin Franklin and architect and physician Dr. William Thornton--a close friend of Washington and his family. In Lettsom's letter, his only known correspondence with Washington, he introduces himself by way of his acquaintance with Dr. Thornton.

The Royal Humane Society was founded in 1774 by physicians William Hawes and Thomas Cogan, with the help of Lettsom, Thornton, and others, as the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned. Concerned with people incorrectly mistaken for dead, the Society formed with the purpose of teaching the "resuscitative art" to help people recover after near-fatal accidents. This was particularly applied in cases of drowning, and sometimes in cases of attempted suicide. The Society promoted resuscitative techniques including a proto-form of CPR, offered rewards to those who successfully resuscitated someone, organized medical response teams in London that could quickly render first aid, and published reports on successful cases and outlined the methods used. The present volume documents hundreds of these cases from the Society's founding to 1794, and includes numerous essays and letters from Society members on different resuscitative techniques and experiments.

The Society was formed in part to address the widespread fear at the time of the possibility of being mistaken for dead and then buried alive. Dr. Thornton--one of the Society's early developers and later the architect of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.--shared with Washington a fear of being buried alive. Washington was so concerned by this possibility that on his deathbed he directed his secretary Tobias Lear to wait three days until after his death to bury him, so as to ensure he had actually passed. Thornton was fascinated with concepts of restoring life to those who appeared dead and, later in his life, the possibility of restoring life to those who were recently deceased. When Washington was on his death bed in December, 1799, Thornton was invited to Mount Vernon by a family member to administer first aid to help the president recover, but he arrived too late. Reportedly devastated by his tardiness, he devised a plan to bring Washington back to life through a series of warm baths, a tracheotomy to induce oxygen, and the infusion of lamb's blood. To Thornton's consternation, Washington's family did not allow the procedure.

The Royal Human Society is still in existence, and now functions largely as a charity that grants awards for acts of bravery in the saving of human life and for the restoration of life by resuscitation.

At the time of Washington's death, he had amassed a library at his Mount Vernon plantation reaching just over 900 volumes. Collected over his lifetime, these books were typically sent to him by their authors or were gifted to him by dignitaries, friends, or admirers--as is the case with the present volume. The library's topics covered a wide range of subjects, from literature and history, to books on agriculture, industry, and militaria. In his will, Washington bequeathed this library to his nephew, Judge Bushrod Washington. Bushrod took possession of the collection in 1802 when he moved into Mount Vernon, and over his 27 years of residence there considerably augmented it with books of his own. Upon his death in 1829, Bushrod split the library between his nephews George C. Washington and John A. Washington. Mount Vernon was then occupied by John, and the 658 volumes bequeathed to George remained there until around 1848, when George then sold a considerable portion of them to bookseller Henry Stevens. Those books were eventually purchased by Washington biographer Jared Sparks and other men of Boston who then donated them to the Boston Athenæum, where they currently reside. The books given to John A. Washington--including this very volume--passed to his son, John A. Washington, Jr., and then to his son, Lawrence Washington. Lawrence's collection, including this book, was then sold at auction on November 28, 1876 in Philadelphia by Thomas Birch's Sons. It was purchased by John R. Baker, one of the sales largest buyer's. Baker's collection was sold 15 years later, from February 11-12, 1891, again at Birch's Sons, where it was purchased by American philanthropist, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, wife of Senator George Hearst, and mother of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. From there the book was either sold by Phoebe before her death in 1919 or was bequeathed to her son William, although it does not appear in the catalogue for the sale of his library at Sotheby's in 1963. It turns up again in 1972 at Charles Hamilton Galleries in New York, and has since been in a private collection.

Very rare. Books from Washington's library seldom come to auction.