THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY OF DISTINGUISHED AMERICANS

New York: Monson Bancroft, 1834. Very good.. First edition of this masterpiece of American art and history - with 144 detailed full-page engraved portraits of American founders, writers, and presidents alongside Jacksonian-era biographies. The NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY was a work of great ambition, both a monument to the American founding sixty years before and a triumphant example of the excellence of American engraving as an art. "No work has come from the hands of American engravers equal in delicacy and beauty to this splendid series of portraits" (Francis P. Harper, 1898 catalogue). Longacre went on to become the chief engraver of the United States Mint, famous today for designing the Indian Head cent.

The GALLERY's subjects include well-known founders such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin (as well as lesser known but influential founders like John Dickinson); writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Catharine Sedgwick, and Lydia Huntley Sigourney; statesmen such as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and Edward Everett; and other icons like explorer Daniel Boone, lexicographer Noah Webster, and scientist David Rittenhouse. Most of the women included are First Ladies, such as Dolley Madison, Abigail Adams, and Martha Washington (whose biography was written by her grandson, G.W.P. Custis). A splendid set with crisp impressions, rare in contemporary morocco. Four volumes, 10'' x 6.75'' each. Contemporary full purple pebbled goatskin, gilt-stamped compartments to spine, gilt and black rules to boards. Yellow coated endpapers, all edges gilt. Illustrated with 144 engraved plates, engraved title pages, extra portraits of Washington (vol. I) and Franklin (vol. II): 150 total. Some rubbing to extremities, with spines gently sunned. A few gatherings toned here and there, with some marginal foxing. Vol. IV coated endpapers reacting chemically with binding paste (presumably due to materials used at time of binding). Engravings with sharp, early impressions.