Gleanings from Old Shaker Journals

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916. Book. Illus. by Illustrated. Very Good. Decorative Cloth. First Edition. 12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916. First Edition. Decorative cloth binding, 298 pp. ASSOCIATION COPY bookplate of William Sturgis Bigelow. Sears was a preservationist, historian, and writer. According to the Fruitlands Museum website, fascination with Bronson Alcott and his experiment win Transcendental living at Fruitlands led Sears to the Harvard and Shirley Shakers, whom she befriended and admired as much as Alcott for their ingenuity, spiritual devotion, and industry. When the Shaker community closed in 1917, Sears brought the eighteenth-century Shaker office to Fruitlands, furnished it with Shaker artwork, implements, and artifacts, many donated by the Shakers themselves. Subsequently, Sears enlisted the help of the Peabody Museum at Harvard to develop a small but exquisite Native American collection, and later still, she built the Picture Gallery to house her Hudson River School landscapes and nineteenth-century vernacular portraits. This book is a result of her intimate knowledge of the Shaker community. This is an exlibrary copy from the Sturgis Library in Barnstable, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, the oldest library building in the country. Library marks include barcode, bookplates, stamp, and pencil. Spines show and boards show wear. Removeable remnants of sticker on spine. Interior clean and tight. Decorative cover. Originally owned by noted collector and noted Bostonian William Sturgis Bigelow, an early Trustee of the Sturgis Library, and bears his bookplate as well as that of the library. Bigelow was a Boston Brahmin/hedonist famous for his all-male nude parties on tiny Tuckernuck Island, off the shores of Nantucket. Bigelow and his guests wore pajamas, or nothing at all, until dinnertime, when formal dress was required. A staff of servants provided food and fine wines; the library contained 3,000 volumes,"spiced with racy French and German magazines," one chronicler reported. Henry Adams described Bigelow's retreat as "a scene of medieval splendor". Bookplates of Sturgis Library and William Sturgis Bigelow, pocket, barcode and paper fragment to rear endpapers, label to spine. Library marks not withstanding, very good solid book..