Curiously the book has been extra illustrated with the addition of sixty plates approximately, inlaid to size where required including what appears to be hand colored plate opposite page 402.
The Life of George Washington
Jared Sparks
1839
This magnificent book measuring 25 x 17 cm, is a first edition and comes in a lovely three quarters red morocco leather binding with a beautifully decorated spine in gilt with six ribbed compartments and the title also in gilt. The book paginates with a frontispiece, xx, and a massive 562 pages. Internally the book is in excellent condition with very little foxing. The hinges are strong and tight and a very small separation takes place at top of front hinge but of no great consequence. Curiously the book has been extra illustrated with the addition of sixty plates approximately, inlaid to size where required, including what seems to be a hand colored plate of Benjamin Franklin opposite page 402.
Many images have been provided below in order for you to examine the condition and contents of the book
Jared Sparks (10 May 1789 - 14 March 1866) was an American historian, educator, and Unitarian minister. He served as President of Harvard University from 1849 to 1853.
Born in Willington Connecticut, he studied in the common schools, worked for a time at the carpenter's trade, and then became a schoolteacher. In 1809-1811 he attended Phillips Exeter Academy where he met John G. Palfrey and George Bancroft, two schoolmates who became his lifelong friends. He graduated from Harvard University (A.b., 1815 and A.M., 1818); in 1812 served as a tutor to the children of a family in Havre de Grace, Maryland, taught in a private school at Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1815-1817; and studied theology and was college tutor in mathematics and natural philosophy at Harvard in 1817-1819. In 1817-1818 he was acting editor of the North American Review.
He was pastor of the First Independent Church (Unitarian) of Baltimore, Maryland, in 1819-1823, Dr William Ellery Channing delivering at his ordination his famous discourse on Unitarian Christianity. During this period Sparks founded the Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor (1821), a monthly, and edited its first three volumes; he was chaplain of the United States House of Representatives in 1821-1823; and he contributed to the National Intelligencer and other periodicals.
In 1823 his health failed and he withdrew from the ministry. Removing to Boston, he bought and edited in 1824-1830 the North American Review, contributing to it about fifty articles. He founded and edited, in 1830 the American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge, which was continued by others and long remained a popular annual.
After extensive researches at home and (1828-1829) in London and Paris, he published the Life and Writings of George Washington (12 vols., 1834-1837; redated 1842), his most important work; and in 1839 he published separately the Life of George Washington . The work was for the most part favorably received, but Sparks was severely criticized by Lord Mahon (in the sixth volume of his History of England) and others for altering the text of some of Washington's writings. Sparks defended his methods in A Reply to the Strictures of Lord Mahon and Others (1852). The charges were not wholly justifiable, and later Lord Mahon (Stanhope) modified them. While continuing his studies abroad, in 1840-1841, In the history of the American War of Independence, Sparks discovered in the French archives the red-line map, which, in 1842, came into international prominence in connection with the dispute over the north-eastern boundary of the United States.
Sparks was one of the American intellectuals who received Alexis de Tocqueville during his 1831-32 visit to the United States. Sparks's extensive conversations and subsequent correspondence informed Tocqueville's best-known work, Democracy in America.
In 1842, Sparks delivered twelve lectures on American history before the Lowell Institute in Boston, In 1839-1849 he was McLean professor of ancient and modern history at Harvard. His appointment to this position, says his biographer, was the first academic encouragement of American history, and of original historical research in the American field. In 1849, he succeeded Edward Everett as president of Harvard. He retired in 1853 on account of failing health, and devoted the rest of his life to his private studies. For several years he was a member of the Massachusetts board of education.
Jared Sparks died on 14 March 1866, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His valuable collection of manuscripts and papers went to Harvard; and his private library and his maps were bought by Cornell University. He was a pioneer in collecting, on a large scale, documentary material on American history, and in this and in other ways rendered valuable services to historical scholarship in the United States
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