TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS IN WALL STREET

New York: Irving Publishing Co., 1888 [c.r. 1887]. xxiv, [2], 684, [1] pages, plus xx pages ("Opinions of the Press") and [1] page author's advertisement. Frontispiece and 47 full pages plates (of 48 called for), mostly portraits and a few views. This copy was bound without the portrait plate of Chauncey M. Depew. Original dark green, gilt-stamped cloth. 23.5 x 16 cm. Embossed binder's stamp of E. Walker's Son, Brooklyn and New York, on the rear flyleaf. Light rubbing to extremities, very slight rippling to the spine, a few tiny spots and some light soiling to cloth. Hinges are intact and the binding of this large, heavy volume is sound. Text leaves are tanned throughout. A few minor traces of marginal foxing. Good plus. Early printing. The title page of the scarce first printing is dated 1887. An important account of Wall Street during the Gilded Age. Henry Clews (1834-1923) emigrated from England to the United States as a teen and made a fortune on the stock exchange. He was an influential member of the Republican Party who served as an advisor to President Grant. He is also remembered as a member of the Committee of Seventy which drove Boss Tweed out of New York politics. At the turn of the century, Clews issued a new edition of his memoirs (N.Y.: Ogilvie, c.r. 1887, but issued circa 1901). It bore the same title and was issued under the same copyright, but it was revised and enlarged to include the fifteen years of events that transpired since he wrote the original, and it is so described in a statement on the title page. A few years later, he expanded the work again to embrace "Fifty Years in Wall Street," the title by which the work is remembered today (N.Y.: Irving, 1908).