Lot 25 HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL | Grandfather’s Chair: A History for Youth. Boston and New York: E.P. Peabody and Wiley & Putnam, 1841

The Property of a Gentleman

HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL

Grandfather’s Chair: A History for Youth. Boston and New York: E.P. Peabody and Wiley & Putnam, 1841

16mo (3 1/8 x 4 3/4 in.; 80 x 121 mm). Some minor foxing and staining. Publisher's 

basket-weave plum cloth, front cover with black paper label decoratively lettered in gilt; spine just sunned. In custom quarter red morocco three-compartment slipcase (to accommodate Famous Old People and Liberty Tree) with folding chemises.

First edition 

Hawthorne first began writing children's stories in 1840 at the urging of "a woman at the House of the Seven Gables [who] suggested that Hawthorne write about ‘that old chair in the room; it is an old Puritan relict and you can make a biographical sketch of each old Puritan who became in succession the owner of the chair’.”  Grandfather’s Chair: A History for Youth was the first of three titles in the Grandfather's Chair series (see following). It was Elizabeth Palmer Peabody—the sister of Hawthorne's future wife, Sofia—who published these stories when the original publisher, Nahum Capen, withdrew.

A very fine copy

REFERENCES

BAL 7590; Clark A6.1; Miller 172

PROVENANCE

Albert Gallatin Browne Jr. (ownership and gift inscriptions to front free endpapers) — Kevin MacDonnell