Description
The first edition of George Washington: Young Washington, the Pulitzer Prize winning biography, inscribed by Douglas Southall Freeman.
Octavo, [two volumes], xxvi, [2], 549pp., [3]; vi, [4], 464pp. Black cloth, title stamped in gilt on the spine. The first printing, with “Scribner’s A” on the copyright page of both volumes. Faint wear to both cloth covers, solid text blocks. Free of marks or internal wear. Illustrated endpapers. Both volumes complete with 7 maps and 14 illustrated plates. Not issued with dust jackets. In the publisher’s fine slipcase, trivial toning to rear label, scarce in this condition.
Volume I is inscribed on the half title by the author: “Autographed for Edythe Robertson Reed / in warm appreciation of all that / she and hers mean to Virginia / Douglas Southall Freeman / Christmas 1948.”
George Washington by Douglas Southall Freeman, the seven-volume biography of Washington, was issued by Charles Scribner’s Sons between 1948 and 1957, beginning with the first two volumes, Young Washington, followed by Planter and Patriot, and Leader of the Revolution in 1951, Victory with the Help of France in 1952, and Patriot and President in 1954; Freeman died before the project was finished, and the final volume, First in Peace, was completed by John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth. The work won Freeman a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1958.
