“One of the Most Important Texts in Political Literature,”
De la démocratie en Amerique.
Paris: Librairie de Charles Gosselin, 1835.
De la démocratie en Amérique, par Alexis de Tocqueville, avocat à la cour royale de Paris, l’un des auteurs du livre intitulé: Du système penitentiaire aux États-Unis. Orné d'une carte d’Amérique. Paris: Librairie de Charles Gosselin, 1835-1840.
[Together with]
Correspondance et Oeuvres Posthumes de Alexis de Tocqueville. Paris: Michel Levy Freres, 1866-67. [From the Oeuvres Completes D'Alexis De Tocqueville Publiees par Madame de Tocqueville].
First edition, first issue of Volumes I and II, second edition of Volumes III and IV of “one of the most important texts in political literature” (Printing and the Mind of Man 358 note). All together, six octavo volumes. [4], xxiv, 367, [1, blank]; [4], 459, [1, blank]; [4], v, [3], 333, [1, blank]; [4], 363, [1, blank]; [4], 474, [2, blank]; [4], 500 pp. With large hand-colored folding lithographed map by Benard after Tocqueville in Volume I.
Similarly bound in contemporary quarter green calf over marbled boards. Spines decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments. Marbled endpapers. Volumes I and II with dark yellow dyed edges, volumes III and IV with light yellow dyed edges. Volume I-IV with edges speckled gray. Spines with consecutive gilt numbering. Some minor rubbing to extremities. Occasional foxing and toning to volumes, mainly volumes I and II. A closed tear to the rear endpaper of volume II. Previous owner's old ink signature on title-page of volumes III and IV. Overall a very handsome set.
“One of the most important texts in political literature” (Printing and the Mind of Man 358 note).
One of the most penetrating political and social analyses of the United States ever written, De la démocratie en Amérique is based on Tocqueville’s travels through America in 1831 and 1832 in company with Gustave Auguste de Beaumont. Charged by the French government to study the prison system of the United States, the two officials made a sweeping tour of the west and south after completing their penal studies in the east, visiting Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, the Carolinas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
"During the last twenty years of his life, and for perhaps half that time after his death, Tocqueville had an increasing European fame. His manner, which is partly imitated from Montesquieu, has considerable charm; and he was the first and has remained the chief writer to put the orthodox liberal ideas which governed European politics during the first half or two-thirds of the 19th century into an orderly and attractive shape...and he had the great advantage of writing absolutely the first book of reasoned politics on democratic government in America" (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, p. 1043).
Clark, Travels, III, no. 111. En français dans le texte 253. Howes T278. Sabin 96060-61 and 96061. Streeter.
HBS 68567.
$15,000.
Price: $15,000.00
Item #68567