Lossing, Benson J. A Centennial Edition of the History of the United States: From the Discovery of America, to the End of the First One Hundred Years of American Independence; With a Full Account of the approaching Centennial Celebration. Illustrated by Four Hundred Engravings. Hartford: Thomas Belknap, 1876. [10810]
Recently rebound in dark wine cloth, bright gilt titles, new end papers, 9 3/4 x 6 1/2 inches; binding is clean and tight. Steel-engraved frontispiece portrait of George Washington, extra color lithograph plate of Liberty seated, in one hand a sword and in the other the US Constitution, with flags, eagle, and shield. 745, lx, [1] generally clean pages, some short tears in a few margins; several of the small wood engraved portraits in the text have had their beards filled in with pencil. Many full-page steel engravings, hundreds of woodcut text illustrations. Good. Hardcover.
The pencil marks can be seen in the beard of the figure in the last illustration. There are not many of the full-page plates so marked, but there are quite a few of the text portraits with the added pencil shading.
"This work has been prepared with great care, for the purpose of supplying a want long felt by the reading public, and especially Heads of Families. Every important event in the history of the United States, from the Aboriginal period to the present time, is presented in a concise, but perspicuous and comprehensive manner...The materials have been drawn from the earlier, most elaborate, and most reliable historians and chroniclers of our continent." - Preface.
Benson John Lossing (1813-1891), b. Beekman, NY; Dover Plains, NY. Lossing was an accomplished wood engraver and journalist who traveled and corresponded widely in search of primary documents and historical accounts. It is said that he traveled 8,000 miles in the United States and in Canada in search of material for his Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, which was first published in parts in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. He produced the wood engravings for many of his books, and his descriptive bookThe Hudson: From the Wilderness to the Sea was featured in the London Art Journal. He also produced book illustrations for other authors, and collaborated with Mathew Brady, whose photographs were the basis for many of the illustrations in Lossing's three-volume history of the American Civil War.
Lossing was successful in presenting accurate, well-researched history in over forty books that were enjoyed by the average American reader. The fellow historian Washington Irving wrote to him in a letter, "I have been gratified at finding how scrupulously attentive you have been to accuracy to facts, which is so essential in writings of an historical nature."
