Mar 01, 2012 - Sale 2271

Sale 2271 - Lot 31

Price Realized: $ 2,640
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) [BROWN, JOHN.] WEBB, RICHARD D. The Life and Letters of Captain John Brown, who was executed at Charlestown, Virginia, Dec. 2, 1859, for an Armed Attack upon American Slavery. Mounted albumen photographic portrait frontispiece from an original daguerreotype. 8vo, original blind-stamped cloth title in gilt on the spine, very slight wear to the bottom of the spine, otherwise an exceptional copy. London: Smith Elder, 1859
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

first edition, only three copies at auction in the last thirty-two years. The editor, Richard Webb, a noted Irish Quaker abolitionist, was the first to write a biography that included a number of letters from Brown, written from prison. The frontispiece, an original albumen print was made from a now lost daguerreotype. The image of Brown, tight-lipped with the fire of righteousness in his eyes, was captured by Benjamin Battells on the eve of the Pottawatamie Massacre in August of 1855. Brown was at this time en route to join his sons in Kansas. There they would face the violent prelude to Civil War in what would later be called "Bloody Kansas."