DAILY RESOLVES by Washington, Booker T - 1896

London & New York: Ernest Nister / E. P. Dutton & Co., 1896. [18]pp. 12mo (14.5 x 9.5 cm). Gilt lettered textured cloth-backed pictorial glazed boards. Frontis and text printed and illustrated through out in color. Modest rubbing and light handsoiling to the binding, blank endsheets lightly foxed, spine very slightly skewed, otherwise an unusually nice copy, the text block crisp and bright. First edition of the author's first book (albeit a brief one), preceding THE FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO by three years. Issued in the publishers' "Gem Series." The text and florid color illustrated borders mimic the popular conception of the style of an illuminated manuscript - the subject of the frontispiece is a scribe's worktable with books, an inkwell, a pen and a leaf of manuscript. It all adds up to the inspirational gift-book format typical of its era, with the design undertaken in London and the chromolithography executed in Bavaria. An uncommon book, not represented or mentioned in a number of the notable catalogues / collections of authors' first books. OCLC locates fifteen copies, and on those uncommon occasions when copies turn up in the wild, they are more often than not in problematic condition.