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Henry Adams' Pilgrimage to Medieval France, Inscribed by His Niece and Companion on the Journey

ADAMS, HENRY BROOKS.

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres.

Place and Imprint: Washington: [Privately Printed], 1904.
Edition: First edition, privately printed in an unknown number of copies.
Bibliographical References: BAL 31.
Condition: A few repaired tears in the margins; edges and label slightly rubbed; very good copy, enclosed in a blue cloth clamshell case.
Book ID: 29000

Physical Description

Large 4to, original blue cloth, reddish-brown leather spine label, gilt lettering, untrimmed.

Comments

Henry Adams' “pilgrimage” into the history of medieval France, as seen through its great monuments, Mont Saint Michel, the cathedral Chartres, and the French culture of the 11th through 13th centuries that sustained them. Mont Saint Michel and Chartres begins as a travel narrative, written in the voice of an uncle describing the past to his niece, and in 16 chapters develops into an imaginative exploration of history and art, in which Adams hoped to make the past more relevant to the present. ¶ Adams published two great works of history late in life, Mont Saint Michel followed by The Education of Henry Adams in 1907. Both were privately printed at Adams' expense, in highly limited editions, intended for friends, persons written about in the text, and those competent to comment on Adams' ideas and suggest changes. Neither were intended for public distribution. In 1906 Adams wrote to a correspondent that not 50 copies of Mont Saint Michel had been distributed; and Harold Dean Cater in Henry Adams and His Friends (1947), wrote that Adams initially had “only forty copies [of The Education] printed, but that demand for it became so great that he had to have more copies made later.” – See under BAL 32. It was not until 1913 that Mont Saint Michel was published in a trade edition, with an introduction by Ralph Adams Cram; and The Education did not see a trade edition until 1918, the year of Adams’ death. ¶ In the preface to Mont Saint Michel, Adams writes about the relationship between the writer and his niece: “The following pages, then, are written for nieces,” and specifically for one “niece, [who] is enough for the uncle to talk to.” The one niece Adams wrote of was Mabel La Farge, who accompanied him on his journey to the Norman French cathedrals and who wrote a memoir of her uncle and his travels in Letters to a Niece (1920). This copy of Mont Saint Michel is inscribed on the front free endpaper to “To Walter Abbott / from a Niece / of / Henry Adams / Merry Christmas! / Dec. 1905 Paris.” In 1905, Mabel La Farge lived in Paris with her husband Bancel La Farge.

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