Henry Alexander Lavely

The Heart's Choice and Other Poems [Signed to F.T.F. Lovejoy]

Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1900. Very Good. Item #9436

Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1900. Revised Edition. Signed by the author opposite title page with inscription to industrialist F.T.F. Lovejoy with inscription "To Mr. F.T.F. Lovejoy with the cordial regards of Henry Alexander Lavely. Pittsburgh, October 29, 1900."

12mo; (7" x 4.75"), [1-4], 5-93pp. Facsimiles of "Carnegie's Gift to Pittsburgh" and "Henry Phipps's Gift to Pittsburgh" preceding body text. Nice, unsigned contemporary rebind in red leather with gilt ornamentation and lettering, leather turn-ins with gilt ornament, marbled endpapers, and gilt lettering. Boards rubbed at corners and spine ends, with some soiling/smudging to surface. Another earlier ownership inscription (Grace L. Newberry?) on flyleaf. Binding is sound and pages unmarked.

Dedicatee Francis Thomas Fletcher Lovejoy was, before the age of 40, a member of the board of directors of the Carnegie Brothers Company, and after a falling out between Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, helped mediate the agreement that led to the creation of the United States Steel Company. Lavely also had ties to Carnegie, having worked under him on the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1850s, and lived in or near Pittsburgh most of his life. A brief review of The Heart's Choice in the Pittsburgh Gazette published the same day this copy was signed praises the volume, mentioning some of the poems "have a local interest, relating to things in and about Pittsburg [and that] Two that will be generally appreciated relate to the Carnegie library and the Phipps conservatory."

Price: $125.00