The Star Speaker: A Complete and Choice Collection of the Best Productions by the Best Authors, with an Exhaustive Treatise on the Subject of Vocal and Physical Culture and Gesturing

Small 4to. Mustard cloth with silver lettering and silver/brown pictorial giltstamping. xv, 599pp, 96pp. Tissue-guarded color frontispiece, numerous illustrations and line drawings, full-page color plates, floral endpapers. Very good. Mild binding edgewear only, with spine lightly shellacked and hand-lettered paper shelf label near foot of spine; text block, tight and bright and near fine. Tight and nice first edition. This hefty anthology pairs a large assortment of prose and verse from an enormous array of authors ranging from William M. Thackeray and Washington Irving to Bret Harte and Walt Whitman with lessons on orating -- how-to's on "Vocal Culture" (Breathing, Gutteral Quality, Pure Tone, Vanishing Stress, many others), "Gesturing" (Adoration, Clinched Hands, Cursing, Modesty, etc.) and "Physical Culture" (Arm Movement, Chest Expansion, Poising, Unequal Breathing, etc.). Best of all, the noted platform speaker who posed in oratorical splendor for all the color plates (and is given "Our Encore Department," a tribute by the publisher's near the end of this book), Lucia B. Griffin, boldly inscribes and signs it on the inner flyleaf: "Hon. W.B. Allison, / with compliments of / Lucia B. Griffin, / Albia, Iowa." Griffin (1865-1940) carved a career as a recitationist and impersonator, but a 1902 railroad accident caused severe head injuries and in 1940 she burned to death when her home in Albia, Iowa caught fire -- "Penniless and alone," as one essay described her. Delightful front board pictorial stamping shows encircled portraits of Shakespeare, Dickens, Lincoln and Webster alongside a standing Senator Chauncey Depew. From the library of William B. Allison (1829-1908), the powerful Iowa Republican who, as U.S. senator from that state (1873-1908), was one of the "big four" who controlled the Senate; as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee for most of those years, he championed tariff legislation and co-authored the Bland-Allison Act of 1878; as member of the Senate Finance Committee he was often courted by U.S. presidents to hold cabinet positions. Early 20th century bookplate on front pastedown notes "This book is part of Allison Memorial Collection Gift of Mrs. Jennie A. Brayton" and until deaccessioned was part of Allison's non-circulating collection at his hometown public library across the street from his Dubuque residence. According to Leland L. Sage in his 1956 biography "William Boyd Allison: A Study in Practical Politics," Allison owned "hundreds of books on government, economics, history, banking, finance, and the tariff [as well as] volumes of American and English literature. An omnivorous reader, Allison doubtless read most of these volumes, if only for relaxation from the strain that accompanied his efforts to solve the many problems facing the Nation.".…