8vo. 245 x 155 mm., [9 ⅝ x 6 ⅛ inches]. [8], 263 pp., [1], with fifteen leaves of plates. In addition to the fifteen b&w illustrations on each leaf, we find a photograph of a portrait of Alexander Hamilton by Laura Wolcott tipped-in on the plate twelve verso. Quarter-bound with cream cloth on the spine and drab paper over boards; printed spine label; fore- and bottom- edges deckled; top edge smooth; printed on laid paper. Light soiling and wear to covers and extremities; spine mildly faded with the printed label slightly rubbed; occasional foxing. Bookplate of William Crowninshield Endicott Jr. (1860-1936), who served as President of the Massachusetts Historical Society, affixed to the front pastedown. An attractive, privately printed work with unique Boston provenance. 

First Edition. One of 60 privately printed copies. Bayard Tuckerman (1855-1923) was an American historian and biographer. We find in his first work, A History of English Prose Fiction (1882), small but persistent traces of the biographical and critical tradition that so occupied his cousin Henry, though written perhaps in a less expressive style. Bayard would go on to publish several notable biographies of early American figures, such as Governor Stuyvesant, General Lafayette, and Philip Schuyler, and lectured on English literature at Princeton. The present work is of an altogether more personal nature focused instead on Tuckerman’s own distinguished Boston family which had been settled in that city since the time of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The work does not claim to be either systematic or comprehensive. Its purpose was to preserve such information and anecdotes that the author and his brother believed might be most instructive to their descendants. The section on Henry Tuckerman, of particular interest to us, is thus not quite as extensive as might be hoped but it does provide an honest and nuanced assessment of his legacy. Bayard acknowledges that the majority of his cousin’s works did not have a lasting impact beyond their author’s own lifetime. However, that is not to say that they were not all of a highly literary quality and some, such as his celebrated Book of the Artists (1867), did in fact stand the test of time to become classic texts on their respective subjects.