?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. Two items: Autograph Letter Signed, "O.W. Holmes" * Autograph Poem Signed, in full. The letter, to Edward L. Jellinck, struggling to remember the year he wrote a certain poem ["Old Ironsides"], and adding in a postscript: "Two or three expressions in the original version were different, but I corrected them in 1836 . . . at the time when I introduced them into my OBK Poems [Poems, published in 1836 by Otis, Broaders, & Co.]." 2 pages, square 12mo, with integral blank; horizontal fold. With the original envelope, with notes by the recipient indicating the name of the poem, and with a cancelled 3-cent stamp. The poem, the last six lines of "The Last Leaf," beginning "And if I should live to be / The last leaf upon the tree," written on a decorative gilt-bordered sheet. 1/2 page, 4to; remnants of mounting along right edge verso. Boston, 2 February 1883; Oxford, 30 June 1886
1883: ". . . [I]n April 1833 I left for Europe, returning in the fall of 1835, and I know it was written before going. I do not think it would have been written in 1830, while I was studying law, but it would be necessary to look over the papers of '33, '32 and '31 until it was found. I hope I shall do it or have it done some day, but I am too busy now."
