INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY JOHN BURROUGHS

BURROUGHS, John. Wake-Robin. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1871. Small octavo, original green pebbled cloth gilt. $950.

First edition of this collection of ornithological essays, Burroughs' second book, with autobiographical Burroughs inscription: "This Wake Robin was written in Washington while I was a clerk in the Treasury Dept., 1864-66. John Burroughs."

In his review of this collection of essays in the Atlantic Monthly, "William Dean Howells said that the book was one in which the 'dusk and cool and quiet of the forest seem to wrap the reader… It is a sort of summer vacation to turn the pages… Perhaps it would be difficult not to be natural and simple in whiting of such things as our author treats… but Mr. Burroughs adds a strain of genuine poetry which makes his papers unusually delightful, while he has more humor than generally falls to the ornithological tribe" (Renehan, John Burroughs: An American Naturalist, 95). With title-page in black and red as called for. Binding B (sequence arbitrary). BAL 1: 2135.

Very faint foxing to text along top edge, cloth with minimal wear to spine edges, gilt bright. A handsome inscribed copy.