Signed/Inscribed Books, Association Copies

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

Harvard University Press: Cambridge (MA), 1974.  First Edition of this winner of the 1975 National Book Award in History. Inscribed “with best regards”, signed and dated by the author.  The recipient, a student pursuing his MPA at Harvard where Bailyn was a professor at the time, had previously written in his name and date, hence a difference in hand-writing in the inscription. Spine a bit creased but book is tight and seemingly unread. Near fine in little rubbed, near fine dust wrapper. Books signed by Bailyn are scarce indeed. Few historians since World War II have left an imprint on that field of study that rivals Professor Bailyn’s.  In his classic 1967 work, “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” Bailyn reshaped the study of the origins of the American Revolution, maintaining that the ideology of liberty and freedom was ingrained in the colonists, displacing Charles A Beard’s then dominant theory that the American Revolution was primarily a matter of class warfare and that the rhetoric of freedom was meaningless.  On topic after topic, in more than 20 books that he wrote or edited, Bailyn shifted the direction of scholarly inquiry, in the process winning two Pulitzer Prizes, a National Book Award, a Bancroft Prize (the most prestigious award given to scholars of American history) and, in 2011, the National Humanities Medal. less