Holmes, Oliver Wendell.

The Professor at the Breakfast Table. [with] A.L.S. to an unknown poet.

Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1860.

8vo, (iv), 410 pp. Original brown embossed cloth, brown coated endpapers. Rebacked, cloth a little rubbed, but sound and square; name in pencil on front free endpaper. 2 pp. A.L.S. signed "O W Holmes," Boston, December 5, 1880, and typewritten transcription tipped in. Letter with a little light edgewear but entirely legible.

§ First trade edition. An attractive copy of the first sequel to Holmes's immensely popular The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table, with a friendly manuscript letter by Holmes tipped in. In the letter dated December 5, 1880, Holmes writes to thank a poet for sending him a volume of poems and for his "courteous words": "The Ars Poetica is so largely cultivated now that a writer of a bygone time like myself is sometimes bewildered in finding himself in a throng of new-born singers, and a kind word is as needful to him from time to time as to the fledgling who is just trying his powers." These light and humorous essays on various subjects first appeared serially in The Atlantic Monthly. They are among Holmes's most famous writings, and those most reflective of him as the model polymath physician and humanist. BAL 8791. Item #125711

Price: $375.00