“A TRIUMPH OF SCHOLARLY TRIBUTE”: FREEMAN'S AWARD-WINNING BIOGRAPHY OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, ALONG WITH HIS IMPORTANT STUDY OF LEE'S OFFICERS, HANDSOMELY BOUND

(LEE, Robert E.) FREEMAN, Douglas Southall. R.E. Lee: A Biography. Four volumes. WITH: Lee's Lieutenants. Three volumes. New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1945, 1946. Together, seven volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter dark blue morocco gilt, raised bands, top edges gilt. $6500.

Later edition of Freeman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning four-volume biography of Robert Lee, along a later edition of his equally important three-volume study of Lee's officers, handsomely and uniformly bound by Maurin.

Freeman, the son of a former Confederate soldier who served in the Army of Northern Virginia, "was invited in 1915 to write a biography of Lee for Scribner's… He identified with him strongly, seeing Lee's life through Lee's own eyes. His biographical method produced an ample, empathetic, and ruminative treatment, abundantly researched and documented, a triumph of scholarly tribute" (ANB). Lee's Lieutenants supplements Freeman's classic biography of Lee and "stands in its own right as one of the great works of military history" (In Tall Cotton, 61). "One of the epic works on the Confederate armies, these exhaustively researched and brilliantly written volumes [Lee's Lieutenants] deserve to be read by all Civil War students. Freeman employs an amazing quantity of information, much of it gleaned from Confederate sources in Richmond, and he is an interesting and intelligent writer, offering insights into a multiplicity of actions and personalities. The three hefty volumes cover the period following Sumter to the end of the Peninsular campaign, Second Bull Run to Chancellorsville, and the Gettysburg campaign to war's end" (Eicher 971). "Freeman was able to pass judgment with calm authority" (ANB). R.E. Lee first published 1934-35; Lee's Lieutenants first published 1942-44. Containing full-page photographic illustrations, facsimiles, battle plans and maps (including large folding map in Volume I of R.E. Lee and in Volume III of Lee's Lieutenants). Dornbusch II:2930. Haynes 6441.

A handsomely bound set of these two important works in fine condition.