[Author's presentation copy] Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

Offered for sale by Adam Langlands of 'Shadowrock Rare Books' - for more information please contact him via email at [email protected] 

Jefferson DAVIS (1808-1889). The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1881. 2 volumes, octavo (9 x 5 1/2in; 229 x 140mm). Pp. xxiii,707 + 4pp. ads; xix,808 + 4pp. ads. 19 plates (including 17 portraits), 14 folding maps. (Some light creasing to the maps). Publisher’s half morocco over marbled paper-covered boards, spine’s lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, marbled edges to book-blocks. (Extremities rubbed, lower joint of vol. I split but cords holding).

Provenance: Dr. Maurice Marcus Davis (1821-1898, presentation inscription from Jefferson Davis ‘Maurice Davis M.D. / with the respects of the / Author’).

First edition: author’s presentation copy to his friend and Physician (when he was in London). A related letter shows that not only the husbands but that both families were fond of each other. Dr. Maurice Marcus Davis (1821-1898) acted as physician to the Davis’s whilst they were in the UK: Mrs. Varina Davis describes him as ‘our skilful and wise Physician’, and later as ‘Dr. Maurice Davis, of London, our kind and skilful friend of years ago’. Dr. Davis and his wife Anita were both from wealthy Jewish dynastic families, and were prominent and quite active in the Jewish community in Great Britain.

Howes D-120; Dornbusch II, 184; Nevins II, p.51 (“Conceals more than it reveals”); In Tall Cotton 34 ("As President Davis' own account this book is obviously of great importance").