Description
Presentation copy of Noctes Ambrosianae from Professor Woodrow Wilson to his brother-in-law, Professor Stockton Axson.
Octavo, xix, 582pp. Brown cloth, title in gilt on spine, some loss of cloth along top edge, shelf wear along bottom panel. Signed by Woodrow Wilson in three places. First signature on front endpaper, dated 1884. Second inscription on front endpaper: “Stockton Axson, 1910. From W.W.” Third ownership signature on title page from Woodrow Wilson. Book plates from Herman Blum and the Blumhaven Library of Philadelphia, PA.
This book was gifted to Stockton Axson in 1910 while Wilson was serving as the President of Princeton University. Professor Axson was the younger brother of Ellen Axson Wilson, the first wife of Woodrow Wilson who died in 1914, shortly after entering the White House. Woodrow and Stockton were close friends at Princeton with Woodrow often using Axson’s apartment as a hideout from the pressures of public life. In retirement, Axson wrote “Brother Woodrow,” but the book was never published. In 1993, scholars at Princeton discovered the insightful descriptions of President Wilson’s personal life and printed the long lost book.
