Scarce Early Work by Longfellow with Close Family Provenance
Manuel de Proverbes Dramatiques.
Portland: Samuel Coleman, 1830.
Price: $3,500.00
About the item
First edition, second issue, containing 288 pages and the errors in pagination on p. 278 and 288. [4], 288 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Scarce Early Work by Longfellow with Close Family Provenance. Original cloth, printed paper spine label, uncut and largely unopened. Provenance: James Greenleaf, Longfellow's brother-in-law, see below (contemporary ownership signature on front free endpaper) – P. K. Foley (1903 purchase identification on slip tipped to rear pastedown). BAL 12041; Livingston, p. 8.
Item #319148
Longfellow had joined the faculty of his alma mater Bowdoin in late 1829 (his grandfather was a cofounder of the college, and his father a trustee). While teaching in his first year as a professor of languages, Longfellow anonymously edited three volumes to be used in French courses, all of which were published by Coleman in 1830. He wrote to Alexander Slidell Mackenzie that the present work collected short comedies, "such as are performed in the Soirées of Paris... I shall send you the 'première livraison' [BAL's preliminary edition] with the grammar: for from necessity I shall be obliged to publish the work in parts, wanting it for immediate use in one of my classes." The other two textbooks were translations of the 18th-century French grammarian and educator Charles François Lhomond: 'Elements of French Grammar' and 'French Exercises,' which are sometimes found bound together. According to Livingston, the three works were apparently finished by the first week in June. All three works – Longfellow's first published books – are very scarce, with none appearing in auction records since the 1930s.
A fine association copy: according to the Bowdoin's general catalogue of students, James Greenleaf (1814-1865) of Gray, Maine, studied at Bowdoin in 1831. His brother Patrick Henry Greenleaf (1808-1869) and Longfellow were Bowdoin classmates and lifelong friends (See Robert L. Gale, 'A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion," p.98). James Greenleaf graduated from Dartmouth in 1834 and moved to New Orleans where he formed a partnership as a commission merchant. A devoted northerner, Greenleaf kept close ties with his family and friends, and married Mary Longfellow, the poet's sister. During tensions preceding the Civil War, they moved north to Cambridge, where Greenleaf died suddenly in 1865. After his death, Mary traveled with her brother when he visited Europe for the last time in 1868-69.
In addition to being rare early Longfellowiana, these are early examples of American editioned cloth binding. The first American bindery to specialize in cloth work was not founded until 1832, when Benjamin Bradley pioneered edition binding, particularly for Ticknor and Fields and Appleton (see 'Bookbinding in America 1680-1910 from the Collection Frederick E. Maser," ed. John Dooley and James Tanis, p. 88).
