Search Results: Titles starting with E from The Raab Collection

1840. Americana OK (or okay, and O.K.) is an American word denoting approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, or acknowledgment. OK is used as a loanword in at least 80 other languages. It has been described as the most frequently spoken or written word on the planet. The earliest known use of OK in print was 1839, in the edition of March 23 of the Boston Evening Post, where it was used to mean “all correct”.It was in an announcement of a trip by the Anti-Bell-Ringing Society. Some later claimed that the term achieved national recognition in 1840, when supporters of the Democratic Party during the 1840 United States presidential election were said to have used it to refer to their nominee, Martin Van Buren, who was nicknamed ""Old Kinderhook"" because he was a native of Kinderhook, NY. Supporters, it is said, held parades with participants shouting “Van Buren is OK”. Others have thrown doubt on the claim of connection to Van Buren. The proof that it does relate to Van Buren is right here… Read More

09/03/1897. William McKinley Japan started emerging into the modern world with the accession to the throne of the Meiji Emperor in 1868. The country quickly began to modernize and industrialize, and one aspect of this was to protect intellectual property. In 1884, a trademark law was promulgated. The Patent Monopoly Act came the following year, and protection for designs was passed in 1888. These were authorized by the Meiji Emperor, who lived until 1912.After years of contention, the dawn of the 20th century saw U.S. and Japanese interests aligned. Both nations supported the idea of an “open door” for commercial expansion in China. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt would act as a mediator at Japan’s request, and the two sides of the conflict met on neutral territory in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the same year, U.S. Secretary of War William Howard Taft met with Prime Minister Katsura Taro in Japan. The two concluded the secret Taft-Katsura… Read More

1400. Theology and Scripture|Medieval Art|All Medieval Historical Documents Books of Hours, private devotional books, intended to guide their reader through the various hours of daily prayer, emerged from the Psalter, a book used by monks and nuns to order their daily devotions. From the fourteenth century, wealthy lay-people began to increasingly want to take part in these regular acts of prayer, and so a demand was created for similar books aimed at the laity. These had twin aims – to aid the user in their prayers, for which a set system of prayers and aids to these was developed (though variable depending on location) - and to demonstrate the wealth and influence of the owner, leading to increasingly more decoration and large devotional images, often by professional artists or workshops dedicated to the production of these books. This type of book was steadily produced in continually increasing numbers throughout the Middle Ages into the Early Modern period, becoming something of a medieval… Read More

12/07/1871. Edouard Laboulaye Édouard René Lefèbvre de Laboulaye was a French jurist, poet, author and anti-slavery activist. In 1865, he originated the idea of a monument presented by the French people to the United States that resulted in the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.Autograph Letter Signed “E. Laboulaye,” Versailles, July 12, 1871 to an unnamed man who wanted his help in obtaining a position. In French, an incomplete translation reads “I do not know anyone at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs…I'll find out what I could do and I am very willing to forward your request that you addressed to the minister. I am very happy to be able to contribute to obtaining you a modest position.” A very gracious letter helping someone, and a very uncommon autograph.A lawyer by profession, following the Paris Commune of 1870, Laboulaye was elected to the national assembly. During the American Civil War, he was a zealous advocate of the Union cause and the abolition of slavery, publishing… Read More

2/6/02. Edward VII The Edwardian Era lasted from the Queen Victoria's death on January 22, 1901, to King Edward’s VII’s death in 1910. It has often been described as a golden sunlit afternoon -personified by its genial and self-indulgent King, with the cares of world war still not visible on the horizon. The appeal of the Edwardian Era is wide, and the subject of such tributes as Downton Abbey. Wealth was abundant and nearly income tax-free; society was no longer a small, exclusive circle confined to those of aristocratic birth, but open to more and more people; the arts (theater, opera, ballet, painting, literature, music, etc) produced genius and modern movements; travel was cheap and easy; and the technological advances were thrilling and amazing. Einstein was an Edwardian and promulgated his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. So were the Wright Brothers, who invented the airplane in 1903. The overall image of the Edwardian age is that of an era of opulence, but it was also an era of… Read More

9/9/54. Albert Einstein The fullest summation we have seen by Einstein comparing relativity to Newtonian concepts of space and timeImmanuel Kant took both Euclidean geometry and the Newtonian laws of motion to be synthetic a priori principles, which, from Kant’s point of view, function as necessary presuppositions for applying our fundamental concepts of space, time, matter, and motion to our sensible experience of the natural world, meaning they are fixed necessary conditions. This idea rested on the absolute nature of space and time, the work of Newton, and the relationship between geometry and physics.In 1905, while a young patent clerk and physicist in Bern, Switzerland, Albert Einstein obtained his doctorate and published a paper that explained his newly developed Special Theory of Relativity. This unlocked many mysteries of the universe, and introduced the world to ""e=mc2,"" equating mass and the speed of light with energy. It established that time and space are not fixed, and in fact change… Read More

18/12/1948. Dwight D. Eisenhower The Founding Letter of the Renowned Eisenhower Center for the Conservation of Human ResourcesYet, during the war, rejections and discharges of men for mental defects reached a total of more than two million.This type of problem would affect industry as well, and Ike sought to establish an entity to research causes and solutionsIn December 1948 Eisenhower was called to Washington where he met with Averill Harriman, Omar Bradley and Harry Truman. The leadership of the military had not settled on a plan to counter the rising Soviet threat and wanted Ike's opinion on fighting force preparedness. He remained in Washington for these meetings in the first two weeks of December. The immediate threat was Russia and a possible attack. The long term threat was to create a more efficient military. He had been assured that such a job, should it require long hours, would be compatible with his new job at Columbia University and so he made that real.Eisenhower gave thought and… Read More

18/03/1882. John H. Ingram John Henry Ingram was an English biographer and editor with a special interest in Edgar Allan Poe.Autograph Letter Signed, 2 pages, London, March 18, 1882 to H. Buxton Forman regarding a biography a lady was preparing on Emily Bronte. “It is so long since I have bothered you on literary matters that you must have flattered yourself that you had got rid of me. But I am again wanting to profit by your experience. Under my editorship a literary lady is preparing a work on Emily Bronte, and I am desirous of obtaining every item, known or unknown, likely to be useful. Can you refer me to any person likely to prove useful, or to any work, magazine papers, or anything whatever? I have the first edition of C. Bronte’s Life, of Wuthering Heights; the Poems of C.E. and A. Bell, Jottings by W.P.P., Haworth Past and Present, Swinburne & Wymyss Reid on C. Bronte, Grundy’s Pictures of the Past and various magazine papers. I am very busy both in and out of office – have a… Read More

28/10/1886. Frederic Bartholdi One of the great American landmarks and the most inspiring symbol of American freedom ever erected, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions upon millions of immigrants to the Promised Land, from whom so many Americans today are descended. It was the embodiment of the words written on its base:“Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”An uncommon 3 1/2 by 6 inch postcard of the statue, inscribed and signed, “With my thanks for your cordial congratulations, Bartholdi”. We obtained this recently in France.The inscription invites conjecture that this was signed in the wake of the dedication of the statue on October 28, 1886.

11/9/68. Lyndon B. Johnson ""A grateful President salutes you.”John L. Lewis was President of the United Mine Workers union from 1920-1960. Coal miners for 40 years hailed him as the man whose efforts brought higher wages, pensions and medical benefits. He was named by FDR a member of the Labor Advisory Board and the National Labor Board of the NRA, and was also the driving force behind the founding of the CIO, a federation of unions that organized industrial workers. In 1952, Lewis commenced the long struggle for a Federal Mine Safety Act, one that would take 17 years to pass. On September 14, 1964, four years after his retirement from the UMWA, Lewis was awarded the President Medal of Freedom, with President Johnson saying at the award ceremony that Lewis was an “eloquent spokesman of labor [and] has given voice to the aspirations of the industrial workers of the country and led the cause of free trade unions within a healthy system of free enterprise.""In 1968, Johnson sent to Congress the… Read More

6/10/55. Ernest Hemingway “When you are dead you are dead for a long time."" He advises a young woman friend, “Please be careful about aircraft…It is one of the great pleasures of life but you pay off accordingly.” Hemingway will send her an animal skin from his African safari to decorate her new house"" Our trophies ( sic ) were shipped July 18th from Mombassa via Amsterdam to be trans-shipped to NY and then here.""After covering the Spanish Civil War, in 1939 Hemingway purchased Finca Vigía (“Lookout Farm”), an unpretentious estate outside Havana, Cuba. In 1940 he published “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, which many consider his best book. All of his life Hemingway was fascinated by war - in “A Farewell to Arms” he focused on its pointlessness, and in “For Whom the Bell Tolls” on the comradeship it creates. During World War II, he flew several missions with the Royal Air Force and landed with American troops on D-Day. He saw a good deal of action in Normandy and… Read More

29/07/1955. Ernest Hemingway “You need an awful lot of luck when working with the sea and with fish.” A fascinating, unpublished letter obtained by us directly from the recipient’s familyOn HemingwayAfter covering the Spanish Civil War, in 1939 Hemingway purchased Finca Vigía (“Lookout Farm”), an unpretentious estate outside Havana, Cuba. In 1940 he published “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, which many consider his best book. All of his life Hemingway was fascinated by war - in “A Farewell to Arms” he focused on its pointlessness, and in “For Whom the Bell Tolls” on the comradeship it creates. During World War II, he flew several missions with the Royal Air Force and landed with American troops on D-Day. He saw a good deal of action in Normandy and in the Battle of the Bulge. He also participated in the liberation of Paris. Following the war in Europe, Hemingway returned to his home in Cuba and turned his attention to writing again. He also traveled widely, and at the end of… Read More

Medieval History, Literature, Law|All Medieval Historical Documents Italy, Macerata, immediately before July 14868 leaves, wants first leaf else complete, with text written in single column of 26-28 unruled lines in a cursive humanistic hand, signed at the end by Bernardo Lippi, and with his seal, his hand also making a small number of corrections to the text, watermark of a horn similar to Piccard 119518 (Venice, 1470), 119522 (Naples 1467), 119525 (Fogliano, 1472), 119586 (Rome, 1468), small waterstain at foot and some small worm, else good condition; once bound within a larger sammelband (perhaps a bound family archive) and with last leaf here foliated ‘197’, now bound in marbled paper over pasteboardsA testament to the working of the law in Renaissance Italy – with Ancient Roman law being used to clarify a complex practical legal case by a renowned legal expertThis manuscript is a legal refutation of the validity of a donation added as a codicil in the will of a citizen of the town of Fermo,… Read More

1930. Robert Frost An etching of Robert Frost done in the 1930s by noted printmaker and designer Richard Hood, 7 x 6.5 inches, signed by both Frost and Hood. Hood was at one time President of the American Color Print Society. Frost, one of America’s greatest poets, won four Pulitzer prizes and was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960. He read one of his poems at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy.This is our first Frost signed image in fourteen years.

1200. Ancient Philosophers|Before 1300|All Medieval Historical Documents Almost certainly used by a scholar at Oxford University in England ""The parts of the soul, if the powers that divide and separate (and are very many), are vegetable, sensible, appetitive, intellectual, deliberate, and also desirable. These differ very much, but to one another are very desirable and deliberative."" The long history of scholarship plays out on precious fragments from a thirteenth century English manuscript. These two half-leaves present the story of the transmission of knowledge from Ancient Greece to a Europe just starting to emerge from the scientific ‘Dark Ages’In the 1330s, the Italian poet, Francesco Petrarch, coined a term for the period of time from the Fall of Rome to the era he was living through— the Dark Ages. The term has stuck in history which has painted the Middle Ages as a time of violence, ignorance, and tribalism, without the ability to foster a global transmission of… Read More

24/10/1854. Winfield Scott Scott was the senior American general in the Mexican War, and the most successful, as it was forces under his command that took Mexico City and forced the Mexicans to sue for peace. They ended up ceding all of their territory north of the Rio Grande to the United States for $15 million, which constituted a sudden increase in the size of the U.S. almost equal to the Louisiana purchase. This presented President Polk with a fantastic achievement for his administration; however, back in Washington Polk was facing criticism for spending too much money on the war. To reduce expenses, Scott was ordered to collect payments from the Mexican states to cover the cost of the American occupation. He soon discovered that he had enemies in the military, composed of generals who resented the appreciation he was receiving, or who were afraid that the hero would become a viable presidential candidate of the Whig Party. They began complaining to Washington that Scott was not raising enough… Read More

1919. Franklin D. Roosevelt|Woodrow Wilson President Woodrow Wilson led the country through World War I and future President Franklin D. Roosevelt was his Asst. Secretary of the Navy who later led the nation through World War II.The U.S.S. George Washington was a troop transport that began carrying American troops to Europe early in December 1917. During the next two years, eleven months of war, and thirteen following the November 11, 1918 Armistice, she transported some 48,000 people from the U.S. to Europe and returned 34,000 to America. The George Washington also played an important role in post-war diplomatic efforts, transporting President Woodrow Wilson and his aides to France to take part in the Versailles Peace Conference.This is a huge 13 1/2 by 19 inch sepia photograph at sea of the U.S.S. George Washington, which in December 1918 and again in March 1919 transported President Wilson to France for the Peace Conference that resulted in the Versailles Treaty. In January 1919, it transported… Read More