John Brown's Body by Stephen Vincent Benet, Signed Custom Harcourt Binding

Binding Details:  Signed custom binding by the Harcourt Bindery, Charlestown, Massachusetts bound in morocco leather over complimentary cloth covered boards with raised bands to the spine, gold gilt titles and ruling, decorative gold gilted embellishments. There are gold ruled covers, hand-sewn silk endbands, marbled endpapers, with the top page edges gold gilted. The Harcourt Bindery label appears on the bottom of the last free endpaper.

Book Details:  Originally published in 1928, this is the Heritage Press edition published in 1948 of Stephen Vincent Benet’s Pulitzer Prize winning “John Brown’s Body” that features 14 full page color illustrations by John Steuart Curry. The following is the Rowman & Littlefield summary as well as some of the reviews of the book: “One of the most widely read poems of our time, John Brown's Body is Stephen Vincent Benét's masterful retelling of the Civil War. A book of great energy and sweep, it swings into view the entire course of that terrible and decisive war, lighting up the lives of soldiers, leaders, and civilians, North and South, amidst the conflict. Generations of readers have found the book a compelling and moving experience. “

"Magnificently readable."—New Statesman.

"It is not one of your tours de forces of intellect and technique, to be admired and then tucked away on the library shelf. It is a library of storytelling itself, a poem extraordinarily rich in action as well as actors, vivid, varied, and so expressive of many men and moods that prose could never have carried its electric burden."—Saturday Review.

"A remarkable piece of imaginative reporting; and one in which not only the forces which make history are embodied in the speech and action of very diverse men and women but the ideas also of which these forces were the driving power."—London Times Literary Supplement

 Measures approximately 10.5” x 6.75” with 454 pages as well as an introduction by Douglas Southall Freeman, Author’s Note, and Order of the Poem. Measures approximately 9.25” x 5.75” with 318 pages as well as an introduction by Charles E. Bennett.

Condition Report:  The binding is in FINE condition. Internally, the book is very clean with no signs of previous ownership. Overall, this is a beautiful binding that houses Benet’s Pulitzer Prize winning classic.

A photograph of the binding appears in the photo section of the listing.