In Memoriam: Flora Stone Mather 1852 to 1909

Cleveland, Ohio: Privately printed, 1910. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Very good-. Quarto, 147pp. (rectos only), illustrated. About very good in the publisher's full dark brown/black morocco with gilt borders, dentelles, silk doublures and endpapers, and floral decoration to spine compartments. General rubbing to extremities, with the leather a bit dried out. Contents clean and bright. Gently offset on the front board with a few old droplet stains. The limitation page states: "A few copies of this volume, prepared for the family, have been printed for private presentation to friends whom she held dear." This copy was presented to Mrs. Seville H. Morse, with her name written on the blank line below the statement (possibly her signature; more likely so issued by the publisher). The binding is not signed; by appearances this was all done in-house by the publisher - a testament to the resources and abilities of printers and publishers, even in a second-tier American city at the turn of the century. A Cleveland rarity; we found no copies of this handsomely bound and highly limited edition, nor any of the trade edition in commerce. Flora Stone Mather, wife of Samuel (Cleveland's richest man for several decades), was a major philanthropist in the Cleveland area. The Flora Stone Mather College for Women at Case Western was named for her, as is the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women.