Records of the Town of Hyde Park, Dutchess County, Edited by Franklin D. Roosevelt
Copy #1
Inscribed to Eleanor Roosevelt by FDR
(Roosevelt, Eleanor) Records of the Town of Hyde Park Dutchess County. Edited by Franklin D. Rosoevelt for the Dutchess County Historical Society. Collections of the Dutchess County Historical Society Volume III. Hyde Park, New York: (for the Dutchess County Historical Society), 1928.
4to.; brown cloth, stamped in gilt; pink manuscript dust-jacket; spine browned; wear to extremities.
In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
First edition, 100 copies numbered and signed by FDR, each with a manuscript colophon, the entire edition.
A presentation copy, inscribed opposite the title page: For My Wife Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. This copy, No. 1, of an edition of one hundred. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hyde Park, 1928; with the
dust-jacket inscribed by FDR: No. 1 Anna Eleanor Roosevelt / Records of Hyde Park / No. 1 / A.E.R. The survival of the pale, leaf-thin jacket is notable: few collectors know of its existence, and we cannot locate another example save that on an uninscribed copy in the Forbes Magazine Collection.
FDR was born, raised, and buried in Hyde Park, a town of several thousand New Yorkers nestled along the Hudson River immediately north of Poughkeepsie. Records had been undertaken, he said shortly after publication, to preserve the contents of both town and church records dating back to 1821 – fragile manuscripts susceptible to the elements or to the abuse of abstracted scholars.
FDR collectors have long perceived Records to be a foundational work. In the autumn of 1951, the A.S.W. Rosenbach Company, the leading American rare books firm, offered for sale various treasures acquired from the Roosevelt family, including a copy of this work inscribed by FDR to his son Elliott (who had arranged the transaction with Rosenbach). Even at that nascent moment in FDR collecting, a commentator reviewing Rosenbach’s offerings referred to this title as “rare.” We have handled only one other significant copy of Records in the past twenty-five years – copy number 6, inscribed by FDR to his son Franklin, Jr. Given FDR’s familial predilections, it would be fair to think he reserved the low numbered copies for presentation to family members, all Hyde Parkers, though when we acquired Anna Roosevelt’s books from her son John Boettiger her copy lacked an inscription from her father.
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