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Hard cover 8vo, in blue cloth blocked with gold seal and titles to top board and spine, illustrated with many full page portraits, top edge gilt, xiii, 236 pp., First Edition. Printed by the University Press, Cambridge U.S.A. Engraved bookplate of the book's original owner, Ralph Sylvester Bartlett (1868-1960) **Condition: Very Good. Shows some edge wear, with rubbing at joints, head and tail of spine. Some marks to the rear cover. Inch-long closed tear repaired to title page. Mildly age toned. **The Eliot, Maine-born Mr. Bartlett was a graduate of Dartmouth College, and a Boston lawyer who found a second career in the art world, amassing a huge collection of White Russian antiquities and art during the 1920's and 30's, which he would eventually donate to his alma mater. The scope of this collection, and the story behind its accrual is the subject of a fascinating article by Robert H. Davis entitled " Russian Art and Russian Studies at Dartmouth: The Case of Ralph Sylvestor Bartlett," appearing in the Journal of Russian American Studies 4.1 (May 2020). **The book details the first hundred years of the history of the Boston Atheneum, from the building of new facilities, the development of the library's collections, the art collection, and the importance of the Atheneum to the literary life of Boston in the nineteenth century. It recounts stories about the participation of some of its most famous members, among them (Newburyport's own) Theophilus Parsons, Hannah Adams, Nathaniel Bowditch, Daniel Webster, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Francis Parkman Jr. et al. There is a list of the Founders, Officers, and Proprietors, which reads like a who's who of nineteenth-century Boston society. It was the largest, most extensive collection of the time.
Ref: MASBO 8901
$95.00