The Details:
Charles John Ann Hereford. The History of Spain … Dublin: J. Exshaw, L. White, and Wm. Jones, 1793. [catalog record]
Henry Clinton. Correspondence between His Excellency General Sir Henry Clinton and Lieutenant General Earl Cornwallis. Probably New York: James Rivington, 1781. [catalog record]
Purchased with funds bequeathed by Joseph J. Cooke, 1883.
The Story:
These titles were secured for $7.00 and $7.50 respectively at the Cooke sales. The rare pamphlet was written while Clinton was serving in New York as commander-in-chief of British forces in North America. Following Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown in 1781, Clinton and Cornwallis each launched a prolonged effort to place the blame squarely on the other’s shoulders.
The finely bound two-volume set came from George Washington’s library. Although lacking his armorial bookplate, each volume was boldly signed by Washington on the title page. The inventory of the Mount Vernon library lists 893 volumes; this set resided in “Case No. 1,” on a shelf with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Shakespeare’s Works.
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Contes du Tems (Perrault) in Case 8
