Parkman's Works, Ten Volumes in Three-Quarter Leather, 1905

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Ten volumes of Parkman's Works, published by Little, Brown and Company of Boston in 1905 and bound in three-quarter brown … Read more Ten volumes of Parkman's Works, published by Little, Brown and Company of Boston in 1905 and bound in three-quarter brown leather over marbled paper boards. The spines are tooled in gilt with rose-and-foliate centerpieces set in panels, dotted rules, and lettering reading PARKMAN'S WORKS above each title. The leather has mellowed to a warm russet, much of the gilt is still bright, and the marbled boards, untrimmed edges, and gentle variation from volume to volume give the run real presence on a shelf — just under sixteen inches of it.

The set gathers Francis Parkman's history of the contest between France and England for North America. Present are Pioneers of France in the New World (1), The Jesuits in North America (2), The Old Régime in Canada (4), Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV (5), Montcalm and Wolfe (8 and 9), The Conspiracy of Pontiac (10 and 11), The Oregon Trail (12), and Charles Haight Farnham's Life of Francis Parkman (13). This is a partial set: volume 3, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, and volumes 6 and 7, A Half-Century of Conflict, are not present.

Parkman (1823–1893) wrote across four decades in poor health, troubled by a nervous disorder and by eyesight so weak that he spent long stretches unable to bear light. He had documents from the archives of Paris and Madrid read aloud to him in a darkened room on Beacon Hill and composed with a wire frame built like a gridiron to guide his hand, writing in red ink on orange paper to spare his eyes — at the worst of it, six lines a day. The Oregon Trail, drawn from the journey he made west along the emigrant road in 1846, was the book that made his name and remains the one most widely read. See less