LAFAYETTE IN AMERICA, SIGNED BICENTENNIAL EDITION

(LAFAYETTE) GOTTSCHALK, Louis. Lafayette in America. Arveyres, France: L'Esprit de Lafayette Society, (1975). Thick octavo, publisher's full tan buffalo gilt, watered silk endpapers, top edge gilt. $1250.

Signed limited "Bicentennial Edition" of University of Chicago professor Louis Gottschalk's riveting history of General Lafayette's crucial role in the Revolutionary War, copy number AF497 signed by the author, with a Lafayette commemorative mourning ribbon and four Lafayette first day covers laid in.

Published to coincide with America's Bicentennial, this is the first single-volume edition of Gottschalk's histories Lafayette Comes to America (1935), Lafayette Joins the American Army (1937) and Lafayette and the Close of the American Revolution (1942). With certification leaf signed by binder Richard Poe laid in; also with a memorial silk ribbon from 1834 commemorating Lafayette's death (trimmed, starched and reinforced with one strip of tape), and with four first day covers marking the 175th and 200th anniversaries of Lafayette's arrival in the United States.

A fine copy, with remarkable additional ephemera.