Founding Lines

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973. First edition of author’s first book, warmly inscribed to Ellis’ close associates: “For Rik & Margot / Who have had / the dubious privilege to / watch young Ellis in / transition as he wrote / this book. Johnson was no / more indebted to that “School / of the Prophets” than I am / to you” Signed as “Joe Ellis” and dated in the year of publication. A fine copy in near fine dust wrapper with some slight fading to the spine, trifle rubbing to the spine tips, one tiny nick, and a little soiling. Ellis won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for his work Founding Brothers, exploring how the interactions between the leading figures of the US Constitutional era profoundly influenced the early development of the Republic. Ellis is also credited with leading a revival of interest in John Adams, a President he viewed as under-appreciated for both his character and achievements. The New England Mind grew out of Ellis’ PhD dissertation at Yale (The Puritan Mind in Transition: The American Samuel Johnson (1696-1772)). While at Yale, Ellis became close friends with Richard “Rik” Warch, a fellow graduate student and then member of the faculty, and his wife Margot. Warch was the author of a history of Yale in the early 18th century, attended by Johnson, and Ellis cites Warch’s doctoral dissertation as “the best secondary account of the intellectual and religious climate at early Yale” in the bibliographical essay of his work. The “School of Prophets” in the inscription refers to the title of Warch’s own book-length treatment of his dissertation (School of Prophets. Yale College, 1701 – 1740 also published by the Yale University Press). less

University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1959.  Two volumes. Complete correspondence between founding fathers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.  Includes the correspondence between Abigail Adams and Jefferson. Inscribed by editor Lester J. Capon.  Spines lightly sunned otherwise fine.  Slipcase rubbed at extremities with a few tape repairs.  No dust wrappers as issued. The correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson spanned half a century and embraced government, philosophy, religion, quotidiana, and family griefs and joys. First meeting as delegates to the Continental Congress in 1775, they initiated correspondence in 1777, negotiated jointly as ministers in Europe in the 1780s, and served the early Republic–each, ultimately, in its highest office. At Jefferson’s defeat of Adams for the presidency in 1800, they became estranged, and the correspondence lapses from 1801 to 1812, then is renewed until the death of both in 1826, fifty years to the day after the Declaration of Independence. One of the monuments of American scholarship and, to quote C. Vann Woodward, ‘a major treasure of national literature.’ less