Description
“We spent three years of happiness such as rarely comes to man or woman. She was beautiful in face and form, and lovelier still in spirit… and when my heart’s dearest died, the light went from my life forever.” – Theodore Roosevelt.
The rarest publication of Theodore Roosevelt: The only edition of In Memory of My Darling Wife Alice Hathaway Roosevelt and of My Beloved Mother Martha Bulloch Roosevelt by Theodore Roosevelt, privately printed in 1884.
Octavo, [4], 45pp, [3]. Contemporary soft calf with black silk-covered endpapers. Conservative tissue repairs to both hinges, text block resewn. All edges black, as issued. Internally clean. Housed in a custom quarter black morocco clamshell, lined with felt, title stamped in gilt on the spine. This copy belonged to “Samuel M. Roosevelt,” with his label on the clamshell.
(Cole & Vail, A4) (Cordingley, Extreme Rarities in the Published Works of Theodore Roosevelt, pp. 26-28.)
Widely regarded as Roosevelt’s rarest publication and one of the great rarities of presidential literature.
Roosevelt privately published this memorial after his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt, and his mother, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, died in the Roosevelt family home on February 14, 1884. Alice died two days after the birth of their only child, Alice Roosevelt Longworth. The volume contains Roosevelt’s personal tributes, the funeral service delivered by the Reverend John Hall, resolutions of the New York State Assembly, and contemporary newspaper accounts of the funeral.
