You Learn by Living.
Roosevelt, Eleanor. You Learn By Living. New York: Harpers, (1960).
8vo.; green cloth with black cloth spine, stamped in gilt; a fine, tight copy in the pink, green, black and white photographic dust-jacket, lightly scuffed on spine; green folding box.
First edition. Signed Eleanor Roosevelt on first blank. Donald Scott Carmichael has inscribed his bookplate: “Signed in person for me at dinner September 23, 1963.” Carmichael, esteemed collector of political materials, was a great fan of Eleanor.
More than a self-help book, You Learn By Living has a reflective moral content seldom found in books of the genre today. In it, Eleanor writes:
Because they have so little, children must rely on imagination rather than experience. They naturally live in a dream world. I was not a happy child so I learned, earlier than most, how important the happy moments are. Like most unhappy children, I lived a dream life in which everything was ordered to my liking and in which, of course, I was the heroine. My father was always the hero....This power of imagination is a kind of defense in childhood. You get away from the realities. It makes you important to yourself. If used correctly, it makes it more possible for you later on to imagine what other people are like and what they think and feel. It helps to keep you curious, anxious to understand what is going on around you...if it is nourished and directed, [imagination] can become a flame that lights the way to new things, new ideas, new experience.
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