Holmes, Oliver W.:

$1,500 · Offered by William Reese Company

OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE. First U.S. edition (the British edition preceded). From the library of the eminent literary agent, A.P. Watt, with his bookplate. An inscribed presentation copy: "Mr. A.P. Watt With the kind remembrance of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston, Nov. 5th 1887." The inscription postdates that in the copy Holmes inscribed to his son by five days. In the passage in the text (p.242) relating to Holmes' befuddled confusion of "Watt" with "Watts" while in London, the initials "A.P." have been inserted in pencil in an unknown hand to make the distinction plain. Alexander P. Watt (d. 1914); English literary agent; founded the agency, A.P. Watt & Son, in 1885. Holmes first visited England during his years as a medical student in Paris (1833-35). Fifty years later he returned as an esteemed literary figure, to receive honorary doctorates from both Cambridge and Oxford. The friendly chorus that greeted him during his 1886 English tour included Edmund Gosse, who wrote in a letter to Richard Watson Gilder on June 18, 1886: "I have just come from the breakfast given to Dr. O.W. Holmes at St. John's College. The dear little man, in his scarlet doctor's gown, with flying pink ribbands, looked beaming, and made a delicious speech which nobody took down. He said that what he had enjoyed most in England was the sense of antiquity over all things, 'like the lichen on an old wall, or, better still, like the patina on an old coin.' He has had a triumph over here, and his heart r

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