Description
From the personal collection of Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, Ph.D., Paul Jones: Founder of the American Navy by Augustus C. Buell, inscribed and annotated by Morison.
Octavo, [two volumes], xv, 328pp; vii, 379pp. Blue cloth, title in gilt on spines, illustrated gilt medallions stamped on front covers. Top edge gilt. Held in custom acetate dust jackets. Solid text blocks, some pages unopened, light rubbing to corners, bookseller’s label on front free endpaper, both near fine examples. Inscribed by Morison on front free endpaper of Volume I: “S.E. Morison / I bought this fake biography just for the pleasure of annotating the fake parts in red. It is one of the most dishonest biographies ever written.” Morison continues through the text with various notes on nearly every page, with comments like “fake,” “pooh” and “never happened.”
Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison (1887-1976) was a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and a 1964 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Morison is best remembered for his 15-volume set titled “History of United States Naval Operations in World War II” and biographies of Christopher Columbus and John Paul Jones. His biography of Jones was inspired by all the faults he saw within this work written by Augustus C. Buell, a controversial author who frequently plagiarized and fabricated his biographies.
