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Privately printed at H.O. Houghton & Co., Cambridge, Mass. **Association Copy, inscribed to Louisa P. Loring.** Hard cover, 4to (measuring 10 ⅛" x 7 ½ inches), in three quarter maroon morocco, with marble paper-covered boards, with banding and titles to the spine in gilt. T.e.g., other edges untrimmed, printed upon laid paper, with a facsimile of Mr. Gray's bookplate used as decoration to title page, 176 pp. Collation: [8], 176,[8]. The Catalogue details the contents of an excellent and well-used personal library, including many titles in Latin, Greek, and the romance languages, history, the law and popular literature. An obituary appearing in the Harvard Law Review in 1915 mentions Gray's lifelong reading habits: "The world's best literature had become a part of him; and his reading seemed to include every time and every subject. Its range was little realized even by his friends…The classic training that enabled him to handle his Greek so lightly no doubt had much to do with the terse elegance of his diction; but it also came from the directness of his character. His hatred of sham or pretense in any form, his perfect lack of affectation or pose, even to himself, combined with his bright intelligence to produce an intellectual honesty that matched the soundness of his moral fiber." ***John Chipman Gray, (1839-1915) Royall Professor Emeritus of Harvard Law School, was also a founding partner of the Boston law firm of Ropes and Gray of Boston, and a founding editor of the Harvard Law Review. A Harvard classmate, William Caleb Loring, was brought into the firm as a named partner, and this particular book was gifted to one of his accomplished daughters, Louisa Loring (see below.) The Grays were a prominent family of Early American jurists, entrepreneurs, merchants, and shipowners of Salem and Boston. John Chipman Gray's grandfather, William Gray, a self-made millionaire of modest background, once owned the largest private fleet of ships in eighteenth century America. The vessels were among the first to trade with India and China. He also helped to fund the building of the frigate Essex, the first warship of the U.S. Navy. He was also a Proprietor of the Boston Atheneum, the leading private library of Boston, as were his descendants, including John Chipman Gray. ***The book's recipient, Louisa Putnam Loring (1854-1924) was half of the well-known Loring sisters, residents of "Burnside" in Pride's Corner, part of Beverly,Massachusetts. Along with her sister Katharine, she was the subject of a now destroyed watercolor painting by John Singer Sargent, done in the garden at "Burnside" in 1917, called "Study in Greens." [An image of the painting can be seen in Jean Strause's "Alice James: A Biography," New York Review of Books, 2011.] Miss Louisa Loring, among other good works, helped establish the Society to Encourage Studies at Home for Women, founded in 1873. Her Boston-area acquaintances included Annie Adams Fields, Sarah Orne Jewett, Julia Ward Howe and Anna Ticknor. Louisa's sister Katharine was famously linked to Alice James, the sister of the author Henry James, in a "Boston marriage." A copy of this book is displayed at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Condition: Very Good. There is moderate rubbing to the outer hinges and corners, as well as partial sunning to the marbled paper boards. The interior remains fresh and bright, with a just a smattering of light foxing to the outermost endpapers. Scarce. An interesting relic of its time and place.
Ref: MASBO 9604
$185.00