Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson - 2 volumes

Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1921. Book. Illus. by Illustrated. Very Good. Paper covered boards. First Edition. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. First edition, limited to 200 copies, this being number 49. Two volumes, 8vo. Paper-covered boards over cloth spine, paper spine labels, top edge gilt, edges untrimmed. 557 pp. including index. Frontispiece portraits of Higginson, protective tissue. The regular edition was published the same year in one volume. This set was presented to noted Bostonian William Sturgis Bigelow by the author's wife, Ida Agassiz, daughter of Harvard professor Louis Agassiz. The envelope with her enclosed note and signature are pasted inside front board, along with the bookplate of William Sturgis Bigelow. Higginson was a noted American businessman and philanthropist, and founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops. In 1890, Higginson presented Harvard College a gift of 31 acres of land, which he called the Soldier's Field, given in honor of his friends James Savage, Jr., Charles Russell Lowell, Edward Barry Dalton, Stephen George Perkins, James Jackson Lowell, Robert Gould Shaw, all of whom perished in the Civil War. Higginson is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This set also bears the dated and numbered bookplates and stamps of the Sturgis Library in Barnstable, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, the oldest library building in the country, and the letter "B" in black on the spines. Bigelow was an early Trustee of the library and a Boston Brahmin/hedonist, famous for his extensive collection of Asian art, as well as his nude men-only parties on a small island off Nantucket. There is very little wear to boards, and interiors are clean and tight with minimal foxing. A very good to near-fine set with a fascinating association..