Books and Manuscripts

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table
Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1858. First edition, first printing. viii, 373 pp. Inscribed by Holmes with a stanza from his poem “The Last Leaf”, on front blank, to Rev. B.M. Burridge: “And if I should love to be / The last leaf upon the tree / For the Spring, / Let them smile as I do now / At the old forsaken bough / Where I cling. / 1831 Oliver Wendell Holmes 1890. / Written for Rev. B.M. Burridge / with the old ‘Autocrat’ pen, Oct. 27th 1890.” Illustrated with an engraved title-page and eight engraved plates, with tissue guards. Publisher's green cloth-covered boards (BAL binding A), stamped in blind and in gilt, spine slightly darkened, boards and extremities rubbed and moderately worn, tear in cloth in lower front joint; all edges trimmed; publisher's ads printed on endpapers; green morocco book-plate of Estelle Doheny on verso of front free endpaper; Burridge's ownership signature on front blank, half-title, and head of title-page, and with a lengthy inscription by him describing when Holmes signed this copy with “the old gold pen with which the MS. of the 'Autocrat' was written”, on recto and verso of half-title; some portions of text block proud; rear hinge slightly worn; in quarter brown morocco slip case and chemise. BAL 8781

A handsome first edition of Oliver Wendell Holmes's most enduring work, inscribed by him with a stanza from his poem “The Last Leaf": “And if I should love to be / The last leaf upon the tree / For the Spring, / Let them smile as I do now / At the old forsaken bough / Where I cling.”