De Imitatione Christi Libri Quatuor (Imitation of Christ).
The Imitation of Christ: De Imitatione Christi Libri Quatuor. Ad fidem optimorum librorum et praecipue vetustissimi codicis de advocatis accurate editi. Accedunt preces missae adjuncto precationum delectu in usum confitentium et commuicantium. Curavit Joannes Hrabiéta, Presbyter eccles, examinator synod, director et professor progymnasii cathol. Dresdensis. Altera edition stereotypa ornamentis illustrate priore emendatior. Cum approbatione RRmi Consistorii cathol. In regno Saxoniae. Hilpertshusiae & Lipsiae Sumtibus Ferd. Kesselring. 1851. 12mo.; illustrated; occasional foxing; black cloth; extremities worn; fragile.
TO ROSE FROM HER MOTHER; EDITED BY A WOMAN
The earliest edition by this publisher; subsequent editions appeared in 1852 and 1855. Inscribed on the front endpaper: Rose Hawthorne, / From her beloved / Mother. Occasional pencil lines in the margins. An interesting volume, given Rose's conversion to Catholicism as an adult. On Sptember 9th, 1856, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, “We breakfasted at Mr. Spiers' house, and then my wife and I walked a little about the town, and bought Thomas à Kempis, in a French translation, and also in English; Sophia being of the opinion it will be particularly good for Una to read” (English Notebooks, Vol XXII, p. 146). They returned to Mr. Spier's house and he insisted on the well known photo. (“Afterwards, when we were all come, he arranged us under a tree, in the garden...and stained the glass with our figures and faces, in the twinkling of an eye; not my wife's face, however, for she turned it away, and left only a pattern of her bonnet and gown...But the rest of us were all caught, to the life, and I was really a little startled at recognizing myself so apart from myself, and done so quickly too" (146-7)).
Sophia waxes poetic about a Priory they visited the following April in York: "How well the old abbots and priors knew where to crystallize their magnificent ideas of state, repose, and worship into stone! Thomas à Kempis might here have written his divine sentences, each one so like a translucent drop of that singing, shining fall—including also the infinite serenity of lawns, and the slumbering sunshine's dim gold...” (Sophia Hawthorne, Notes in England and Italy, p. 16—also, English Notebooks, Vol XXII, p. 609). As the adult Rose not only embraced the Roman Catholic Church but founded an order of Sisters, this is an intriguing, if not prophetic early gift from her mother.
A stellar association copy of a very rare book; OCLC locates only one copy.
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