Elsie Venner : a romance of destiny

Elsie Venner : a romance of destiny

Title pages

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

First edition of Holmes' novel, Elsie Venner. This is a presentation copy from Holmes to Henry Jacob Bigelow (1818-1890). After Holmes’ death, his friend and fellow novelist William Dean Howells (1837-1920) said of Holmes' work, “His novels all belonged to an order of romance which was as distinctly his own as the form of dramatized essay which he invented in the Autocrat. If he did not think poorly of them, he certainly did not think too proudly, and I heard him quote with relish the phrase of a lady who had spoken of them to him as his ‘medicated novels.’ That, indeed, was perhaps what they were; a faint, faint odor of the pharmacopoeia clung to their pages; their magic was scientific. He knew this better than any one else, of course, and if any one had said it in his turn he would hardly have minded it. But what he did mind was the persistent misinterpretation of his intention in certain quarters where he thought he had the right to respectful criticism in stead of the succession of sneers that greeted the successive numbers of his story; and it was no secret that he felt the persecution keenly.”

Title page of Elsie Venner by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

Ticknor and Fields

1861

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Holmes Collection (PS1960.A1 1861, v. 1)

text

1 title page

English

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DigID0002190

From the collections of the Boston Medical Library