The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1858. First edition. 8vo. Engraved vignette title-page and 8 plates, letterpress title-page printed in red and black. viii, 373, [1] pp. Publisher's brown cloth, covers stamped in blind with ornate frame with curved inner corners, spine titled in gilt and stamped with 4 gilt rings (3 with fleur-de-lis and 1 with publisher's monogram), publisher's advertisements on endpapers (BAL binding A); small circular wormhole to cloth on rear joint, slight gouge to lower margin of first few leaves, still a remarkably fresh copy, in a custom brown cloth slipcase and chemise A fine first edition of the fictionalized table talk of Oliver Wendell Holmes, the epitome of the intellectual Boston Brahmin ethos. Contains two of his most celebrated poems, "The Deacon's Masterpiece or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay" and "The Chambered Nautilus." The Autocrat originated with two early essays published under that title in the New England Magazine in 1831 and 1832. Holmes reused the title 25 years later, publishing the new series of conversational essays in the first 12 numbers of The Atlantic Monthly before they were gathered here in book form.PROVENANCE: Mrs. J. Insley Blair (Blairhame book-label)REFERENCE: BAL 8781; Currier & Tilton, pp. 69-74; Grolier, American 69; Johnson, High Spots of American Literature, pp. 41-2