Description
Inscribed by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, first edition of Hunting Big Game In The Eighties: The Letters of Elliott Roosevelt Sportsman.
Octavo, x, 182pp. Blue cloth, title in gilt on spine and front cover. The first printing, with Scribner’s A and seal on copyright page. Light overall wear to cloth, gilt rubbed on spine, faint foxing to endpapers, solid text block. Frontispiece portrait of Elliott Roosevelt, with tissue cover. In the publisher’s first state dust jacket, faint soiling to covers, chipping along lower edge of both panels, a very good example. Includes PSA/DNA authentication paperwork. Inscribed on the front free endpaper to Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt’s longtime Assistant Secretary from Albany, James J. Mahoney. Inscription reads: “To James Mahoney, With warm regards. Eleanor Roosevelt. May 24th, 1934. The White House. Washington, D.C.”
The recipient of this book, James J. Mahoney, was a longtime political aide in Albany, New York, known to the Roosevelt family as “side-kick.” Mahoney served a number of New York governors, including William Sulzer, Martin H. Glynn, Charles S. Whitman, Al Smith, Nathan L. Miller, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert H. Lehman and finally Thomas E. Dewey. Governor Dewey appointed him to his final government position as Secretary to the State Department of Conservation. Upon his retirement in 1946, it was noted, “It is doubted if there is any living man with a greater knowledge not only of state government but also to the trust placed in him by political as well as government leaders since the day, while still a high school student, he became a page in executive offices.”
