The Counsel Assigned.
Andrews, Mary Raymond Shipman, [1860-1936]. The Counsel Assigned. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912. 43 pp. Frontispiece. Publisher's cloth-backed boards with black ink stamped front cover. Worn and bumped. Contemporary previous owner's inscription to front free endpaper, otherwise internally clean. A good copy. $45. * First edition. A short work of historical fiction that focuses on a fictional legal case involving a young Abraham Lincoln. The story is framed as a recollection by an elderly judge about a poignant case from his early career, set against the backdrop of 19th-century America. The narrative centers on a young boy who is wrongfully accused of murder and whose fate rests in the hands of his court-appointed defender: Abraham Lincoln, during his time as a lawyer. This book, a companion piece to Andrews's more famous work about Lincoln, The Perfect Tribute, aims to capture the essence of Lincoln's integrity and humanity. The inscription in blue ink indicates the book was owned by the early twentieth-century educator Harriet Loomis Bromley (1880-1975) of San Diego, California, who was also an active member of the American Historical Association. She was known informally as "Hattie". The inscription in brown ink, "Father W -- from Hattie / 12/25/12", suggests she presented this book as a Christmas gift to a clergyman well-known to her in the year of publication, 1912. This is an early and uncommon example of a volume concerning the law that was both authored by an American woman writer as well as being contemporaneously owned (as well as inscribed and gifted) by an American woman reader.
Price: $45.00
Book number 84992