[Eleanor Roosevelt] Agnes E. Meyer

Out of These Roots: The Autobiography of an American Woman [Signed by Agnes Meyer and Eleanor Roosevelt]

Boston: Little, Brown and Company / An Atlantic Monthly Press Books, 1953. Near Fine / Very Good. Item #28136

Boston: Little, Brown and Company / An Atlantic Monthly Press Books, 1953. First Edition. Signed by Eleanor Roosevelt and Agnes E. Meyer at front free endpaper without inscription. Octavo. 385 pp. Frontispiece. Printed dust jacket with "$4.00" price present. Green boards stamped in black and gilt; yellow topstain. Dust jacket creased and lightly chipped along edges. Boards show mild shelfwear and bottom corners bumped. Binding is sound and aside from signatures interior unmarked. Near Fine in a Very Good dust jacket.

In her position as journalist for the Washington Post, which her husband had purchased in 1933, Meyer penned numerous articles describing the problems facing veterans, migrants, and African Americans. She also wrote a tribute to a young Saul Alinsky and decried Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist campaign as a threat to academic freedom.

Despite her activism, she named Eleanor Roosevelt as having been her "political enemy" in this memoir, though the two would become close and work together later in life. In an appreciation of Meyer in her "My Day" column in 1957 Roosevelt wrote, "It is interesting that, as you grow older, sometimes you have the good fortune to outgrow some of the misunderstandings of your youth and to learn the real values of people... Mrs. Meyer and I started off not only on opposite sides of the political fence but we thought our philosophies of life were completely different."

A lovely association copy highlighting the civil right activist's friendship with her former rival. The Meyers' legacy at the Washington Post would continue through the work of their daughter, Katherine Graham, who led the paper's coverage of the Watergate Investigation and which won the paper a Pulitzer Prize.

Price: $1,250.00