Description

SIGNED BY JOHN ADAMS, A RARE ASSOCIATION COPY OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS’ LETTERS ON SILESIA, 1804, ADAMS’ FAMILY COPYALSO INSCRIBED BY ADAMS’ GRANDDAUGHTER AND DESCENDANTS

ADAMS, John Quincy. Letters on Silesia, Written during a Tour through that Country in the Years 1800, 1801. London, 1804. Octavo, contemporary full brown sheep.

First edition of John Quincy Adams’ Letters on Silesia, an exceptionally rare family association copy signed by John Adams on the prefatory advertisement leaf and additionally inscribed by the elder Adams’ beloved granddaughter Abby and his family descendants, with folding map.

This rare association copy of Letters on Silesia is signed by the nation’s second president John Adams, and features a lively narrative of his son’s travels during the summer of 1800. Appointed by President Washington as the minister to the Hague in 1794, the younger Adams would not return to America until after his father’s defeat in the 1800 election. As America’s sixth president, John Quincy Adams made his own substantial contributions as a statesman noted for “his strong commitment to public service… and as a leader of congressional opposition to the institution of slavery” (ANB). These letters to his younger brother Thomas “reveal Adam’s basic political philosophy and values in the context of the changing political landscape of Europe and the relation of the United States to these events” (Russell 30). Initially the letters “were published without Adams’ knowledge in the Port Folio, a weekly [Federalist] paper edited by Joseph Dennie, at Philadelphia. The series was afterward collected and published in a volume in London” to critical and popular acclaim (Seward, Life & Public Service of John Quincy Adams, 72). With folding frontispiece map of Silesia. Lowndes, 9. Not in Sabin. Signed by the nation’s second president John Adams on the prefatory advertisement leaf in a cursive hand showing the characteristic tremble of age. Additionally inscribed by the elder Adams’ beloved granddaughter Abby on the flyleaf under her married name of Angier and further inscribed and dated 1832 by her, using her Adams family name, on the front free endpaper: with that leaf also featuring the inscription, “Annie F. H. Boyd, From Elizabeth E. Adams, Quincy, April 1901.” Boyd armorial bookplate. Light scattered foxing, tiny chip to gutter of folding leaf without affecting plate. Expert restoration to extremities of contemporary binding.