Ticknor's Spanish Library

(LIBRARY CATALOGUE). WHITNEY, JAMES LYMAN. Catalogue of the Spanish Library and of the Portuguese Books Bequeath by George Ticknor to the Boston Public Library Together with the Collection of Spanish and Portuguese Literature in the General Library. Boston: 1879. 1st ed. Small folio. 15, [1], 476 pp. Printed double column. Full polished calf, gilt, aeg. Cervi & Sanford, Binders. Contemp. sheep lined protective jacket. Binding sun struck along the edges. $375.00

1 of 200 large paper copies in a splendid binding. A presentation note from the compiler is tipped in. "Having assembled a representative library through his own efforts and those of foreign friends, he had at hand a goodly array of documents on which to base his estimate of Spanish letters....No captious criticism of recent times can detract from the ract that in it, for the first time, there was produced a truly scholarly survey of the whole range of Spanish letters...It blazed the way for the investigations of Spanish literature which were carried on so energetically after the mindpoint of the nineteenth century, and [History of Spanish Literature] remains a monument of American scholarship....

"Ticknor became one of the founders of the Boston Public Library in 1852...Finally, by his will, he bequeathed to it his invaluable collection of books relating to the Spanish peninsula, stipulating that not a volume was ever to leave the precincts of the library building." --DAB.