BECKY SHARP THROWING DR. JOHNSON’S “DIXONARY” OUT OF THE CARRIAGE WINDOW, AS SHE LEAVES MISS PINKERTON’S SCHOOL
From the first pen-and-ink sketch, by Thackeray, afterwards elaborated
He enjoyed the love and respect of all book-collectors and we all congratulated him when he graduated from the bookshop to the library. For many years in charge of the rare-book department of Dodd, Mead & Company, and subsequently a partner of Robert Dodd, he was the first custodian of the choice collection of books formed by the late Harry Elkins Widener and bequeathed by the latter’s mother to Harvard. A more admirable selection could not have been made. A scholar and a gentleman, he brought to that position just the qualities needed for a post of such distinction, but, unhappily, he lived hardly long enough to take possession of it. He died at Christmas, 1914, after a long and painful illness.
James F. Drake, in New York, specializes in association books and in first editions of nineteenth-century authors. His stock I have frequently laid under contribution. My Surtees and many other colored-plate books came from him, and first editions innumerable of authors now becoming “collected.”
I know of no bibliography of George Moore, but my set is, I think, complete. Many are presentation copies. George Moore’s many admirers will remember that his volume, “Memoirs of My Dead Life,” is much sought in the first English edition. I have the proof sheets of the entire volume, showing many corrections, as in the specimen on page 50. My “Literature at Nurse,”—a pamphlet attacking the censorship of the novel established by Mudie,—which was published at threepence, and now commands forty dollars, is inscribed to Willie Wilde; while “Pagan Poems” was a suitable gift “To Oscar Wilde with the author’s compliments.”
There is no halt in the constantly advancing value of first editions of Oscar Wilde. That interest in the man still continues, is evidenced by the steady stream of books about him. Ransome’s “Oscar Wilde,” immediately suppressed; “Oscar Wilde Three Times Tried,” and “The First Stone,” privately printed by the “Unspeakable Scot,” already difficult to procure, are among the latest.