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Lot 2242

HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. 1809-1894.

11 June 2008, 13:00 EDT
New York

Sold for US$660 inc. premium

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HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. 1809-1894.

5 items:
2 Autograph Letters Signed (“Oliver Wendell Holmes”), 2 pp, 8vo, Boston, November 20, 1888 and January 31, 1890, earlier letter annotated on verso of integral blank leaf by Oliver Barrett (“One of the earliest autographs I secured ORB”), both creased and moderately toned, earlier letter tipped at left margin to mount. Latter letter tipped at all edges. Holmes answers an autograph request from the young Oliver Barrett, but lectures him on the proper way to ask for such a favor: “You will find it a good practice in asking for autographs to send an envelope, stamped, and directed to yourself and containing the blank card or paper to be written on. Why should you give the person you address trouble which you could just as well save him? But never mind this time.” In the second letter, he is much angrier at the young collector: “Did it never occur to you that you ought not to give me the trouble of finding paper, envelop, and postage-stamps and of folding and directing a letter … I suppose your omission was owing to ignorance of the obvious proprieties in case of such an application….”
Present also are a letter signed of Holmes, 1 p, 8vo, Boston, April 1, 1890 declining a request; Holmes, O.W. Poems L: 1846. 16mo. Original cloth. With cut signature tipped to front pastedown; an ALS of Charles Carleton Coffin, 3 pp recto and verso, 8vo (conjoining leaves), Boston, January 16, 1889, to Oliver Barrett, sending an autograph and discussing his fiction.

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