first edition
1899 · Boston
by EMERSON, Ralph Waldo; Charles Eliot Norton (ed)
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899. First Edition. First printing. Large Paper issue. 12mo (18.5cm / 7-1/4"). Publisher's terra-cotta cloth; printed paper spine label; [2],3-81pp. Page edges untrimmed. Mild bumps to board corners and spine ends; few specks of foxing to endpapers; offsetting to title page and facing blank from laid-in clipping (no longer present); still a tight, Very Good or better copy of the scarce Large Paper issue, reputedly one of only fifty copies (see note below). Laid in is a letter to a "Mr. Smart" from New York bibliophile and financier Charles W. McAlpin, dated October, 1899, transmitting the book as a gift: "My Dear Mr. Smart: I thought of you as soon as I read the announcement of this book and now I send it....there were only fifty copies issued in uncut condition..." BAL 5307 (noting this "so-called" large-paper issue, but not the reputed limitation mentioned here). MYERSON A47.1.a, binding B.
(Inventory #: 51827)