Description
First edition, second printing of Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, inscribed by Carl Sandburg to artist and journalist S.J. Woolf.
Octavo, in four volumes, xxxi, 660pp; xii, 655pp; xiii, 673pp; xii, 515pp. Blue-gray cloth, title in gilt on spine. Light rubbing to cloth, all near fine. Top edge dyed yellow. In the publisher’s slipcase with silk ribbon pull, shelf worn at edges, stable condition. (Howes S82) (Monaghan 3711). Signed by the author on the half-title of Volume I. Inscription reads: “S.J. Woolf, with appreciation and thanks. Carl Sandburg / 1939.”
The recipient of this set, Samuel J. Woolf (1880-1948) was a noted portrait artist and journalist for the The New York Times. When he interviewed Carl Sandburg about this book in 1939, Woolf offered high praise, calling Sandburg a poet-biographer. (Woolf, “Sandburg Talks of Lincoln,” The New York Times Magazine, December 17, 1939). Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln: The War Years went on to win the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for History.
