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  "And if I should live to be the The Last Leaf upon the tree in the Spring, Let them smile as I do now At the old forsaken bough Where I cling": First edition of Oliver Wendell Holmes' The Last Leaf; inscribed by him to Ulysses S. Grant's daughter Nellie Grant

  HOLMES, Oliver Wendell.

  The Last Leaf. Poem. By Oliver Wendell Holmes.

  Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin & Co. The Riverside Press, 1886.

  First edition of Holmes' classic poem. Folio, original publisher's half vellum with gilt titles and tooling to the spine and panels, top edge gilt, illustrated by George Wharton Edwards and F. Hopkinson Smith. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to Ulysses S. Grant's daughter Nellie Grant, "Oliver Wendell Holmes for Miss Nellie Grant" and additionally signed and inscribed by him on the second blank with a stanza from The Last Leaf, "And if I should live to be the The Last Leaf upon the tree in the Spring, Let them smile as I do now At the old forsaken bough Where I cling. Oliver Wendell Holmes Boston December 21st 1885." Soon after South Carolina's secession from the Union in 1861 and the start of the Civil War, Oliver Wendell Holmes began publishing pieces—the first of which was the patriotic song "A Voice of the Loyal North"—in support of the Union cause. Although he had previously criticized the abolitionists, deeming them traitorous, his main concern was for the preservation of the Union. Less than a month before Johnson issued a proclamation that declaring the end of the War, Holmes was approached by the Semi-Centennial Committee of the New England Society to write a poem honoring Ulysses S. Grant, the guest of honor at the grand opening ...

  Price: $4,000.00     Item Number: 138225

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