Lot 235: WALLACE, LEW

Ben-Hur. A Tale of the Christ. New York: Harper, 1880

In 8s (6 1/2 x 4 1/2 in.; 165 x 115 mm). The six advertisement leaves not preserved. Original brown hard-grained morocco gilt, spine gilt-lettered and gilt within six compartments, top edge gilt; slight wear at outer joints, the marbled endpapers cracked at inner hinges.20798; Russo and Sullivan, Seven Authors of Crawfordsville, Indiana, pp. 315-319; Grolier American 82

First edition, one of ten copies in this special morocco binding. Presentation copy to the wife of the Secretary of State, inscribed (vertically) by the author on a front flyleaf to Mrs. James G. Blaine: "Crawfordsville [Indiana], June 21, 1881. As Mrs. Secretary Blaine was pleased to express satisfaction with 'Ben-Hur,' I have thought a copy of the book might be well received. With great respect, I venture to offer it to her. Lew. Wallace." James G. Blaine was a Republican senator from Maine who was twice denied his party's nomination for prsident: in 1876 by Rutherford B. Hayes and in 1880 by James A. Garfield. In 1884, Blaine secured the Republican nomination but lost the general presidential election to Grover Cleveland. However, President Garfield appointed Blaine his Secretary of State. In April 1881 President Garfield read Ben-Hur, which had been published the previous November and which "had become the book of the hour, the age, the one novel that everyone must read" (Robert E. and Katharine M. Morsberger, Lew Wallace: Militant Romantic, NY, 1980, p. 312). The president loved the book and was "inclined to send its author to Constantinople, where he may draw inspiration from the modern east for future literary work. Wallace had been proposed for Paraguay, which he wouldn't accept, but Garfield succeeded in switching the appointment to Turkey... Across the left-hand corner of the diplomatic commission, Garfield wrote the name of the novel & his initials. Wallace went to Washington for a cordial meeting with the president and a briefing by Secretary of State Blaine" (Morsberger, pp. 285 and 313).Wallace had just served as territorial governor of New Mexico, where he completed his phenomenal best-seller. He would stay as minister to Turkey until 1885.

Ben-Hur is rare inscribed and in this publisher's morocco binding. BAL notes: "According to a letter from the publishers to Wallace, dated Nov. 13, 1880, reproduced in facsimile in Russo and Sullivan... the publisher ordered 12 copies bound in plain cloth and 10 copies in full morocco. BAL has not examined a copy of the first printing [of which this is one] in these bindings..." "In America, 300,000 copies of Ben-Hur were sold in the first ten years after publication, making it one of the highest-ranking best-sellers of the nineteenth century" (Grolier); it went on to spectacular success on stage and in several movie versions.