It’s that line by George RR Martin: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies … the man who never reads lives only one.”

-Neil Pasricha, The Toronto Star, "Why you should spend more time in bookstores."

New arrivals: a pictorial history of a Revolutonary War-era New York town

Carol Case Greene, Historic Sullivan (1990, Town of Sullivan, NY, 77 pp, paperback, very good condition). Greene, the town historian of the Madison County, New York are first settled in the 1790s, produced a compact but copiously illustrated history of the manners and architecture of the people. Sullivan, now a town of 15,000, is between Albany and Buffalo. The title page is inscribed by the author. Inquire re pricing. Shipping is always free.

New arrivals: the most famous work of a legendary Oregonian

Charles Erskine Scott Wood, Heavenly Discourse (New York, Penguin Books, May, 1946; stated first Penguin Books ed.) #594, original price 25 cents.  252 pp., acceptable reading copy. First edition after the 1927 hardcover. Most of the back cover is missing and the pages are yellowed and slightly brittle. Inquire re pricing. Shipping is always free.

Wood, as Tim Barnes notes in The Oregon Encyclopedia, "may have been the most influential cultural figure in Portland in the forty years surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. He helped found the Portland Art Museum and was instrumental in making the Multnomah County Library a free and public institution. He secured the services of his friend Olin Warner, a nationally known sculptor, to design the Skidmore Fountain, and his words "Good citizens are the riches of a city" are inscribed at its base. The Portland Rose Festival was his idea. He numbered among his friends Mark Twain, Emma Goldman, John Reed, Clarence Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, Ansel Adams, John Steinbeck, Charlie Chaplin, James J. Hill, and Langston Hughes. Soldier, lawyer, poet, painter, raconteur, bon vivant, politician, free spirit, and Renaissance man, Wood might also be the most interesting man in Oregon history.

'He was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, February 20, 1852, the son of Rosemary Carson and William Maxwell Wood, first surgeon general of the U.S. Navy. Wood graduated from West Point and came west in 1874 to fight Indians. He served as aide-de-camp to General O.O. Howard in the Nez Perce (1877) and Bannock-Paiute (1878) campaigns. Wood recorded one of the most famous speeches in Native American oratory, the surrender speech of Chief Joseph, which reportedly ended with "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." There is some controversy about the recording of Joseph's speech. Wood claims to have written it down as Joseph spoke, but some historians believe that he recorded a speech Joseph gave to his chiefs in council as reported to Wood by two Nez Perce go-betweens. He and Joseph became friends, and he would twice send his oldest son Erskine to summer with Joseph in Colville, Washington.

"Wood returned to West Point as Howard's adjutant, earning a law degree at Columbia University on the side. It was there that he participated, anonymously, in literary history, arranging for the West Point press to print Mark Twain's "1601," or Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors, a scatological story of life in Queen Elizabeth's bedchambers. The elaborately printed edition of only fifty copies is legendary among book collectors.

"He retired from the army and returned to the West with his family, settling in Portland in the mid-1880s. He became a member of the first law firm in Oregon, Durham and Ball, where he specialized in maritime law. Senator George Williams was in the firm, and many of its clients were wealthy pillars of the town. Wood represented the French banking group, Lazard Freres, helping it sell a wagon road grant and arguing the case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1915. His was "probably the first million dollar fee in Oregon history."

"Wood and his wife Nanny raised five children and were vital members of the Portland aristocracy. They had three sons, Erskine, Max, and Berwick, and two daughters, Nan and Lisa. His wife Nanny (born Nanny Moale Smith), came of age in the aristocratic circles of Washington, D.C., and was a grande dame of Portland society noted for her beautiful garden.

"Wood's love of the visual arts is carved in Portland cultural heritage. The presence of works by several American impressionists—J. Alden Weir, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Childe Hassam, and Olin Warner—in the houses of fortunate Oregonians and in the Portland Art Museum is primarily due to Wood. He was a talented painter with a particular gift for landscapes and watercolors. Some of his own work, perhaps done with Hassam in eastern Oregon on one of his visits, still hangs in the museum.

"He called himself a philosophical anarchist but worked with the Democrats, even running for senator in 1906. A Democrat in a Republican state, he nevertheless had an influence on the political atmosphere, working closely with William U'Ren to draft and pass the initiative and referendum and direct election laws. He became an advocate of Henry George's single tax, the idea of taxing only undeveloped land in order to discourage land speculation, thereby redistributing wealth and democratizing the economy. In 1908, he resigned from the Oregon Bar Association after it refused to admit a black attorney. He was a vocal supporter of the suffrage movement and eloquent critic of the United States' entry into World War I. He supported the Industrial Workers of the World, commonly known as the Wobblies, and he defended both Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger when their right to speak in Portland was challenged.

"Wood was a gifted public speaker and a talented, versatile writer of poetry, fiction, drama, satire, essay, articles, and occasional verse. Between 1904 and 1911, Wood wrote for The Pacific Monthly, a popular Portland magazine, publishing poems, stories, articles, book reviews, features, and a column called "Impressions." In "Portland's Feast of Roses," a 1908 article boosting the Rose Festival and the growing prosperity of Oregon, Wood paused to question the cutting of old-growth timber: "There is no spot where the primeval forest is assured from the attack of that worst of all microbes, the dollar." His politically charged Christmas verse (annual gifts) are beautiful examples of fine press printing. Wood's first book was A Book of Indian Tales (1901), myths and legends he collected while soldiering and exploring in the Northwest and Alaska. In 1904, he published A Masque of Love, a poetic drama defending free love.

"In 1915, Wood published The Poet in the Desert, a long poem set in the southeastern Oregon desert, which he often visited, staying in the Harney basin area with his friend Big Bill Hanley (cattle baron and sagebrush philosopher, at whose P Ranch along the Blitzen River Wood often stayed). In this epic Jeremiad, Wood summons the spirit of the natural world—truth—in judgment of the ills of civilization—poverty, prostitution, and economic injustice. Wood wrote three distinct versions of the poem—in 1915, 1918, and 1929—and it is the work for which he wished to be remembered. He gained a modicum of fame for Heavenly Discourse (1927), a book of forty satirical dialogues set in heaven with a benevolently libertarian god attended by angels and his intellectual heroes (Mark Twain, Voltaire, Rabelais). His favorite targets were prudery, prohibition, war, and evangelical fervor.

"At the age of fifty-eight and estranged from his wife, Wood fell in love with the beautiful poet and suffragist Sara Bard Field Ehrgott. She was thirty years younger than he and married to a Baptist minister. Sara divorced her husband, spending a year in Nevada to do so, but Nanny Moale refused to consider giving Wood a divorce. In 1918, after providing for his family with the fee he received from the Lazard Freres group, he joined Sara in San Francisco. Wood's departure scandalized Portland.

"The couple built a modest estate called "The Cats" on a hillside overlooking Los Gatos and lived a life of comfortable Bohemianism, writing and entertaining guests. Wood wrote a long rant called Too Much Government (1931) and a sequel to Heavenly Discourse called Earthly Discourse (1937). Occasionally, they roused themselves for a worthy cause, actively supporting The Scottsboro Boys and Leon Trotsky's right to a fair trial and vigorously defending themselves when they came under investigation by HUAC (the House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities). Wood died just before his ninety-second birthday on January 22, 1944.

"C.E.S. Wood helped create the institutions and form the attitudes that we recognize as intrinsic to the Oregon experience. He championed independence, social justice, the arts, freedom, and the free. He is one of the patron saints of Oregon's understanding of how to live well."

At the time of his death Wood was West Point's oldest living graduate. He was the father of Nan Wood Honeyman (1881-1970), Oregon's first U. S. congresswoman (1937-39), and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, Jr. (1879-1983), an Oregon attorney who spent summers as a boy with Chief Joseph.

Dinner at 8: midcentury meals in a Manhattan townhouse, preserved over nearly a quarter-century in a rare entertainment diary

12 E. 81st Street (center, red brick facade) Google Maps, 2017

“A decorative stone panel is set into the facade and, nearly hidden behind the tree branches, two stone urns are perched on the parapet.”- Daytonian in Manhattan, April 21, 2016

From Henry Bemis Books’ ephemera collection:

Brentano’s Dinner Party Record, (undated, “37, Avenue de l’Opera, Paris; New York etc.” c. 1927). Leather bound, softcover, gilt titling and fore-edges, 8 x 10”. Spine gone, covers deteriorating, sewn binding. Green-gold shamrock designed endpapers.

150 cream-colored pages with slightly visible page rulings for entries in gatefold spreads for each event. One page features a Plan of the Table, with remarks; the other, space for noting Where Given, Date, Guests Present and Unable to Attend, Menu, Wines, and Particulars of Table Decorations.Sixty pages cover social events in the lives of Stanley Adams Sweet (1884-1952) and his wife, Grace Avery Ingersoll Sweet (1889-1955) between 1927 and 1950, in their residence at 12 E. 81st Street, New York, between Madison and Fifth Avenues. HBB price: $750.00.

“If these walls could talk,” the old saying goes.

Henry Bemis Books has proof that, in rare instances, they can: a Dinner Party Record diary for the residents of 12 E. 81 Street, New York City, between November 23, 1927, and sometime in 1950.

Sold by the Paris branch of Brentano’s, the American bookseller, the softcover, 150-page volume offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of wealthy mid-20C New Yorkers. We have only found a record of one other, kept by the Civil War veteran, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, industrialist and Delaware US Senator Henry Algernon Du Pont (1838-1926). His copy covers the period 1913-16 and is held in the archives at Winterthur, the Du Pont family, home/museum.

Architectural historian Tim Miller, who blogs as Daytonian in Manhattan, begins our tale:

Although architects Arthur M. Thom and James W. Wilson designed some prominent structures—the Centre Street Criminal Courts Building, the impressive Nevada Apartments, and the Harlem Courthouse among them—they would be most known for their innumerable rows of speculative cookie-cutter rowhouses they cranked out for developers.  Among these was a row of 11 brownstones erected between 1883 and 1884 for developers William and Ambrose Parsons on East 81st Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues.

On May 15, 1884, Max Goldfrank purchased No. 12.  As was customary, the title was put into his wife’s name.  With Max and Bertha Goldfrank in their new home were son Walter and daughter Edna.  The family existed quietly, their names appearing in society pages rarely.  An exception was the announcement of Edna’s engagement to J. A. Strausser on October 30, 1905.

Less than three years later, on March 12, 1908, the funeral of 71-year old Max Goldfrank was held in the house.  Bertha stayed on until 1919 when she sold the 23-foot wide house to Stanley Adams Sweet for $60,000—about $275,000 in 2016.

Sweet was the 37-year-old head of Newburgh, New York-based Sweet-Orr Co., founded by his father, uncle, and great-uncle in 1871. Arguably the first manufacturer of jeans in America- even before Levi Strauss, the founders were Irish immigrants who, after working in the California gold fields, saw a need for well-nigh indestructible workmen’s overalls. They set up in Wappingers Falls, whose villagers called the venture Orr’s Folly. The three invested every penny they had, and within a few years the folly was doing so badly they moved to it a bigger, converted oilcloth factory in Newburgh, a Hudson River town 61 miles north of Manhattan.

Sweet-Orr overalls were soon the stuff of legend. As one library blogger put it,

Supposedly, customers kept sending letters to the company about how their Sweet-Orr pants (or coat) had saved them from fires, drowning, falling from great heights, and more.

Naturally, Sweet-Orr began to use these customer testimonies in their advertising, complete with dramatic copy and illustrations. There was only one problem—no one believed the advertisements. The stories sounded just too amazing to be true.

Not to be deterred, the company thought up a new plan: the dramatic advertising was pared down, and a new campaign was developed to demonstrate the durability of Sweet-Orr pants and overalls.

Company representatives began visiting factories and work yards, promising Sweet-Orr pants to any six men who could pull a pair apart in a game of tug-of-war. No one ever managed to do it, and the demonstration became iconic, eventually becoming the company’s logo in 1880.

By the advent of World War I Sweet-Orr’s products were not only indestructible but unshrinkable (“not even one-sixteenth of an inch!”).

The Sweets moved up fast. Stanley studied art in Paris, graduated Yale in 1907, married Grace Ingersoll in October 1910, and by the time he bought the five-story, 6800-square foot Goldfrank home, he could afford to wait two full years to move in while it was remodeled in the newly-popular neo-Federalist style:

City of New York Landmark Preservation Commission, “Metropolitan Museum Historic District Designation Report” (1977), at p. 56.

The Sweets- Stanley, Grace, 32, and Stanley Jr, 5, took up residence in 1921. They took their first season in the 23-foot-wide house as a shakedown cruise. Daytonian reports,

It appears that Grace Sweet and the butler, named Simmons, came to a mutual agreement in 1922.  On May 4 that year he placed an advertisement in the New York Herald seeking work.  “Experienced, well trained Englishman, medium height, neat appearance, 36 years old, would like situation as butler and valet.”  Although Simmons explained he was to be “disengaged May 15,” he was still living in the house and offered “excellent references.”

Life was flush in the Roaring Twenties. Sales Management magazine reported the company reached half a billion value in today’s dollars by its 1921 half-century mark:

Stanley Sweet moved between the company’s plants and his board memberships, which included the American Hard Rubber Company, the Fulton Trust Company, the Union-Made Garment Manufacturers’ Association and the International Association of Garment Manufacturers. An accomplished painter, he was a member of the Business Men’s Art Club. “In 1932 he displayed “Tide Water Creek” in the Business Men’s Art Club show; and later his works were exhibited at the Salmagundi Club, the Yale Club, and the University Club.  He received prizes for the latter two,” Daytonian found in contemporary news accounts.

Sweet’s interest in art and design had a practical side, as one can see from this 1911 Sweet-Orr design mark drawn from his signature:

The Sweet’s first event in the Brentano’s Dinner Party Record is an event for “Mother Ingersoll’s birthday, 59-60” on November 23, 1927, apparently in Stanley’s hand. A dozen attended: close friends and family, as subsequent entries indicate. There is no record of the menu, wines, “Plan of the Table”- which got an adjoining page of its own- regrets, or “Particulars of Table Decorations”, nor is there for the next, a theater party of eight for “The Escape.”

Just what they saw is a mystery. A melodrama by that titled played at the Lyric in New York for twenty performances in 1913 (a New York Times critic wrote, “Mr. Armstrong appears to be the sort of playwright who when he does go wrong covers the whole distance”); the D.W. Griffith-directed movie did not open in Manhattan until May of 1928.

Stanley skipped noted a February bridge party of four, and the menu- but not the guests- for a dinner Leap Day Night, 1928. The first big event recorded is the March 12, 1928, stag dinner for twelve feting Thomson E. Goring, vice president of Sweet-Orr, to mark his fiftieth anniversary with the company. Goring was family: his father, Edward was an English immigrant to Wappingers Falls,

apprenticed to the trade of engraving to calico printing, which he followed from 1845 to 1860. For the succeeding nine years he was engaged in the coal business, and in 1869 he was a member of the firm of Disbrow & Goring, iron founders. He was supervisor for the Town of Fishkill, a member of the New York Assembly, and president of the village in 1879. In 1883 he was appointed, by President Arthur, postmaster at Wappingers Falls. Mr. Goring was a trustee of the Grinnell Library for thirty years. He was actively involved in a number of local enterprises including: the creating of the town of Wappinger from the town of Fishkill; the incorporations of Wappingers Savings Bank, and Bank of Wappingers respectively; the incorporation of Wappingers Falls as a village; and in the laying out of the new road to New Hamburg as a public, instead of a toll road, as chartered by the Legislature.

Stanley’s notes included  “50 pink roses put on chest at the head of stairs”; “about 60 telegrams and letters”, and a table setting of “yellow jonquils & mimosa- yellow candles”.  After cocktails and hors d’oeuvres came tomato soup; celery, olives, nuts, and crisp bread; tomato soup again; “fish souffle-lobster Newburgh”; mushroom-stuffed breast of chicken; peas, potato croquettes and dinner rolls; alligator pear salad with cheese sticks; fresh strawberry ice cream garnished with whipped cream; a white and gold Dundee cake iced with “TEG 1878-1928” and “with candle ‘50 Years’; after the meal, sherry, Benedictine and coffee were served.

Thomson Goring (right), The Garment Worker, July 29, 1921, p. 1

There was a dinner party in early 1929 connected to the Stoll-McCracken Siberian-Arctic Expedition (“airship of Capt. Nemo on trip to Arctic Regions”); and birthday parties and other celebrations (including bigger events at the St Regis and Pennsylvania Hotels) in the sixty pages the Record covers. There are gaps and omissions- the recording is by another hand in the 1930s- and the details become more casual through the war years. The company continued to grow, obtaining licenses to supply the Boy Scouts of America:

The Sweets were busy as well: through those decades they wintered in Bermuda, and, later, bought a summer place at Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Stanley Jr married Barbara McGraw (her father was chairman of the publisher McGraw-Hill) and took over Sweet-Orr from his father, who died playing golf at Old Saybrook in 1952. He left an estate of $42 million in today’s money.

Grace kept the townhouse until her death in 1955. The family sold it to an attorney, and it passed through multiple owners over the next half century, including a 1980s Cuban UN ambassador and a Wall Street telecommunications analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, Jack Grubman. He bought it for $6.2 million in 1999, when he was making $20 million a year inflating investment prospects for the industry and indulging enough self-dealing to be banned from securities trading for life:

In 1999, Mr. Grubman, then a high-powered analyst, bumped an AT&T stock from “neutral” to “buy,” thereby so appeasing AT&T CEO Michael Armstrong that he cast a vote on Citigroup’s board desired by chairman Sandy Weill. In return, Mr. Weill donated $1 million to the 92nd Street Y.

The smoking gun was a 2001 email to a friend: “You know everyone thinks I upgraded [AT&T] to get lead for [AT&T Wireless]. Nope. I used Sandy to get my kids in 92nd ST Y pre-school (which is harder than Harvard) and Sandy needed Armstrong’s vote on our board to nuke Reed in showdown. Once coast was clear for both of us (ie Sandy clear victor and my kids confirmed) I went back to my normal negative self on [AT&T]. Armstrong never knew that we both (Sandy and I) played him like a fiddle.”

After paying a $15 million fine, Grubman still had $75-100 million left, and in 2008 he listed 12 E. 81st for sale at $32 million.

That was rich even for the neighborhood. The price was dropped to $28.5, then taken off the market in 2009. In March 2010 the Grubmans sold it for $19.6m. It is now owned by a doctor specializing in child psychology.

Stanley Jr and Barbara had one daughter, Nancy Adams Sweet. After making her debut in Manhattan in 1966, she married Lawrence Master in 1970. Stanley presided over Sweet-Orr’s decline into a regional manufacturer, then licensed the rights to the company named to an Anglo-South African firm, B. Oppenheim & Co. Inc., and worked as a consultant before he died in 1989. Barbara died in 2001.

Sweet-Orr is now based in South Africa, and still uses the company logo.

Sweet-Orr vintage clothing, buttons, and advertising materials are highly collectible.

_____________

Henry Bemis Books is one man’s attempt to bring more diversity and quality to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg market of devoted readers starved for choices. Our website is at www.henrybemisbookseller.blogspot.com. Henry Bemis Books is also happy to entertain reasonable offers on items in inventory; for pricing on this or others items, kindly private message us. Shipping is always free to US locations; local buyers are welcome to drop by and pick up their purchases at our location off Peachtree Road in Northwest Charlotte if they like.

We accept electronic payments via Facebook Messenger, powered by Stripe.

We regret that until California Assembly Bill 1570 (2016) is struck down by court order or amended to relieve out of state booksellers from its recordkeeping and liability burdens, we are unable to do business with California residents.

We offer 25% off to fellow dealers.

What’s your favorite social media outlet? We’re blogging at www.henrybemisbookseller.blogspot. com. We tweet as Henry Bemis Books. Have you liked us on Facebook yet? Henry Bemis Books is there, too. And Google+!

You can also see Henry’s alter ego, Lindsay Thompson, on a three weekly Facebook Live programs: Rare Book Cafe, a 2:30-3:30 pm EDT Saturday panel show about books; Book Week- Rare Book Cafe’s weekly Thursday noon news program (both on Rare Book Cafe’s Facebook page); and Gallimaufry, an occasional program about literary history on Henry Bemis Books’ Facebook page.

#Ephemera #Brentanos #DinnerPartyRecord #SweetOrrCo #HenryBemisBooks #Charlotte

Today is Bloomsday. Stretch a little.

It's Book Fair Week at last!

The week's @RareBookCafe features Kentucky bookseller John Glover as we head into the weekend of the @FloridaBookFair! See it here: https://t.co/0sx0eYx5Gl pic.twitter.com/YFfmsB03ab

— Henry Bemis Books (@henrybemisbooks) April 16, 2018

Don't miss this week's show! Next week will be here in a hurry-

Don't miss this week's BookWeek! Before you know it, it will be next Thursday! https://t.co/8lbEDGICSq pic.twitter.com/65bbjgEUOB

— Henry Bemis Books (@henrybemisbooks) April 14, 2018

An American original

Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president, vice president, Secretary of State, Minister to France, Governor of Virginia, founder of UVa, author of the Declaration of Independence, was born 175 years ago today. He never said a single thing you have ever read attributed to him on Facebook. pic.twitter.com/GxKAFfLGeT

— Sidekick (@waldosjournal) April 13, 2018

Honoring Thomas Jefferson's 275th birthday: Revolution in the Carolinas

U.S. News & World Report, 200 Years: A Bicentennial History of the United States (1st ed. 1973). LOC 73-77836. Two-volume folio set in red cloth boards and leatherette bindings; Vol. 2’s spine is pretty faded compared to Vol. 1’s. Nice illustrated slipcase with one fold loose at the top rear. 702 pp. Very good condition. HBB Price: $35.

Coolidge, Calvin, Have Faith In Massachusetts (Houghton Mifflin/Riverside Press, 1919). Speeches by the then-new Governor, who later became the only American president born on the 4th of July. A must-have for enthusiasts of  Silent Cal’s minimalist government views (National Review anointed then to-be and not yet former Senator Scott Brown the New Coolidge). Deaccessioned from the Zephyrhills, FL public library. No dust jacket but otherwise very good condition. Duodecimo, 275 pp. HBB price: $35.

Roberts, Kenneth, The Battle of Cowpens: The Great Morale-Builder (Doubleday, stated 1st ed., 1958).

This essay was the last work of the noted New England journalist, novelist and Revolutionary War-era historian (1885-1957). Awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in history for his contributions to the discipline, Roberts was a longtime correspondent for The Saturday Evening Post who was the first American to cover Hitler’s abortive 1923 coup attempt in Germany.

In this book, Roberts considers how the one-hour battle, just three months after Kings Mountain, turned the corner in the American Revolution and made inevitable Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown. His publisher, Herbert Faulkner West, wrote in the preface, “I am proud to be the publisher of a small limited edition of his last piece of historical writing, characterized as usual by a slight air of belligerency hovering over it.”

Octavo, 111 pp, with a nine-page appendix of Robert's’ collected works. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, very good condition. Rare. HBB price: $85.

Draper, Lyman C., Kings Mountain and Its Heroes: History of the Battle of Kings Mountain, October 7, 1780, And The Events Which Led To It (1881; reprint by The Overmountain Press, 1st printing, 1996). ISBN 1-57072-060-6. Hardcover, no dust jacket. Octavo, 612 pp. with index. Facsimile of the original. Green boards with gilt titling and reproduction of cover art. Very good condition. HBB price: $60.

Draper, Lyman C., Kings Mountain and Its Heroes: History of the Battle of Kings Mountain, October 7, 1780, And The Events Which Led To It (1881; reprint by Genealogical Publishing Co., 1971). ISBN 0-8063-0097-3. Hardcover, no dust jacket. Octavo, 612 pp. with index. Facsimile of the original. Foxing along the text block edges. HBB price: $35.

Dunkerly, Robert M., Kings Mountain Walking Tour Guide (Dorrance Publishing Co., stated first printing, 2003). ISBN 0-8059-6117-8. Paperback, 43 pp. Very good condition. Autographed on the title page by the author, a Kings Mountain National Military Park ranger. Contained two longhand emendations at p. 38, which deals with the treatment of British loyalists: "hung" has been changed to "hanged" twice. In 2007, Dunkerly published a book of eyewitness accounts of the battle. HBB price: $10.

Edgar, Walter, Partisans & Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned The Tide of The American Revolution (William Morrow, 1st ed, 1st printing, 2001). ISBN 0-380-97760-5. The prominent South Carolina historian’s account of the British invasion of the Carolinas, and how it led to their defeat. Edgar is a fine writer. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, mylar cover, octavo, 198 pp. very good condition. HBB price: $30.

Ward, Christopher L., The War of the Revolution (John Richard Alden ed., Macmillan, 1st ed, 1952). 2 vols, slipcased, 989 pp. Octavo, hardcover, no dust jackets; blue buckram boards, with some darkening of the spines. Tight, square binding, very good clean text blocks. Slipcased, in good condition.

Ward (1868-1943) was a Delaware lawyer who wrote much of the state's landmark 1899 corporations law, then- after it became a haven for businesses to form there- cofounded Corporation Service Company. CSC remains a giant in the of managing Delaware corporate registration and reporting services.

Wealthy, Ward devoted himself to writing producing over two dozen books in the 1920s and '30s. His work ranged from poetry to literary parody. parody to Delaware history to his great work, the fifth edition of Delaware Corporations and Receiverships (1932).

The War of the Revolution was Ward's last and most significant work and remains a frequently-consulted set. At the Mises Institute website in 2007, Murray Rothbard called it "the best-detailed history of the military conflict." HBB price: $50.

_______

Henry Bemis Books is one man’s attempt to bring more diversity and quality to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg market of devoted readers starved for choices. Our website is at www.henrybemisbookseller.blogspot.com. Henry Bemis Books is also happy to entertain reasonable offers on items in inventory; for pricing on this or others items, kindly private message us. Shipping is always free to US locations; local buyers are welcome to drop by and pick up their purchases at our location off Peachtree Road in Northwest Charlotte if they like.

We accept electronic payments via Facebook Messenger, powered by Stripe.

We regret that until California Assembly Bill 1570 (2016) is struck down by court order or amended to relieve out of state booksellers from its recordkeeping and liability burdens, we are unable to do business with California residents.

We offer 25% off to fellow dealers.

What’s your favorite social media outlet? We’re blogging at www.henrybemisbookseller.blogspot. com. We tweet as Henry Bemis Books. Have you liked us on Facebook yet? Henry Bemis Books is there, too. And Google+!

You can also see Henry’s alter ego, Lindsay Thompson, on a three weekly Facebook Live programs: Rare Book Cafe, a 2:30-3:30 pm EDT Saturday panel show about books; Book Week- Rare Book Cafe’s weekly Thursday noon news program (both on Rare Book Cafe’s Facebook page); and Gallimaufry, an occasional program about literary history on Henry Bemis Books’ Facebook page.

#Independence #RevolutionaryWar #FirstEditions #HenryBemisBooks #Charlotte

Here's this week's LGBookT!

Here's this week's LGBookT: https://t.co/EAI9yLm38C pic.twitter.com/oIa52g0CAe

— Henry Bemis Books (@henrybemisbooks) April 13, 2018