Essays: Historical and Literary (Two Volume Set | Fine Leather Binding): Volume 1: Scenese and Characters in American History; Volume 1: In Favourite Fields

Two Volumes complete. FIRST EDITION. Lovely tan three quarter morocco leather signed by the binder Duvald. Raised bands, gilt tooled designs in comparments. Modest wear to the extremites, Top edges gilt. Ribbon. Marbled boards and endpapers. 422 pages and 316 pages. No previous owner's names, not exlibrary. Overall in VERY GOOD condition. Photos available upon request. JOHN FISKE (March 30, 1842 - July 4, 1901) was an American philosopher and historian. John Fiske was born Edmund Fiske Green at Hartford, Connecticut, March 30, 1842. He was the only child of Edmund Brewster Green, of Smyrna, Delaware, and Mary Fiske Bound, of Middletown, Connecticut. His father was editor of newspapers in Hartford, New York City, and Panama, where his father died in 1852, and his widow married Edwin W. Stoughton, of New York, in 1855. On the second marriage of his mother, Edmund Fiske Green assumed the name of his maternal great-grandfather, John Fiske. As a child, Fiske exhibited remarkable precocity. He lived at Middletown during childhood, until he entered Harvard. He graduated from Harvard College in 1863 and from Harvard Law School in 1865. He had already admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1864, but never practised law. His career as author began in 1861, with an article on "Mr. Buckle's Fallacies" published in the National Quarterly Review. After that, he was a frequent contributor to American and British periodicals. From 1869 to 1871, he was university lecturer on philosophy at Harvard, in 1870 instructor in history there, and assistant librarian 1872-1879. On resigning the latter position in 1879, he was elected a member of the board of overseers, and at the expiration of the six-years' term was re-elected in 1885. Beginning in 1881, he lectured annually on American history at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, and beginning in 1884 held a professorship of American history at that institution, but continued to make his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He lectured on American history at University College London in 1879, and at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 1880. He gave many hundreds of lectures, chiefly upon American history, in the principal cities of the United States and Great Britain. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. …