The Lincoln Papers: The Story of the Collection with Selections to July 4, 1861 by MEARNS, David - 1948

Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1948. Hardcover. Complete 2-volume set. Introduction by Carl Sandburg. 8vo. Tan cloth with gilt lettering, dust jackets. xvii, 332pp; pp. 333-681pp. Frontispieces, illustrations. Near fine/very good. Minor jacket edgewear; second volume has slight front flyleaf abrasion from bookplate removal and nonauthorial 1948 gift inscription on half-title page. A tight and handsome first edition of this significant set -- plus bearing a choice autograph addition: Tipped to the front flyleaf of the first volume is a Typed Noted Signed from Mearns (1899-1981; Library of Congress's manuscript division chief), 1p, 8½" X 11", Washington, DC, 8 September 1952. Addressed to noted Lincoln/Civil War scholar Arnold F. Gates (1914-93). Near fine. Cordial comic note on "Library of Congress" letterhead: "I have just finished reading The Round Table, Vol. 1, No. 1. Congratulations! May it always be as well spread and may the increase of boarders require putting in first one leaf and then another." Signed simply "Dave" in black fineline. Gates served as officer of the New York Civil War Round Table and long-time editor of their newsletter. In addition to this, a special tipped-in flyleaf is signed hugely and in full in blue ink by Alfred Whital Stern, whose signature is so broad at 7½" it runs vertically! Stern, (1881-1960) was a famed Chicago philanthropist and renowned Lincoln collector whose 11,100 item Lincoln collection became one of the cornerstones of the Library of Congress's Lincoln collection when he donated it there in 1953. In 1959 the Library of Congress published (with introduction by Mearns) "The Illinois Political Campaign of 1858: A facsimile of the Printer's Copy of his Debates with Senator Stephen Arnold Douglas," a reproduction of this important artifact donated by Stern.