A Brief Biography of Perry Williams Harvey, Born, at Cleveland, May 10, 1869; Died at Thomasville, Georgia, May 24, 1932.

Frontispiece, 49 double leaves, unopened at top. The double leaves are printed on outside rectos and versos, but some of the double leaves are printed on rectos only. Part of the text is paginated 5-25, [35]-54. Folio. Original 3/4-leather and marbled boards. Small piece missing at top of spine. Leather scuffed along joints. Corners of covers worn. Sunning of upper third of each cover. Frontispiece (of Perry Williams Harvey) is wrinkled. Two different bookplates of Perry Williams Harvey are pasted to front and rear pastedowns. Good. First Edition. "Mrs. Perry Williams Harvey assembled the material for this memorial to her husband, though she died before the book was actually published" (Foreword). The Foreword is signed: I.W.L. (Mrs. John Lowman), and dated Cleveland, December 1936. This memorial volume contains (on pp. 15-25) Harvey Williams Cushing's essay "Books and the Man" about his cousin Perry Williams Harvey. In his biography of Harvey Cushing, Fulton writes (pp. 677-678): "During these weeks H.C. was making preparations for an address about his cousin Perry Harvey. Two years previously he had promised Mrs. Harvey that he would write an appreciation of his cousin, but the proper inspiration had been slow to come, doubtless because of his own ill health. He had meanwhile enquired about the disposition of his cousin's Baskerville collection: 'I wonder what you are planning to do with the Baskerville collection. The Sterling Library of course would treasure them, and I have an idea that Perry would be pleased to know that they were featured here in the Rare Book Room with his bookplate. I am planning to leave my library to Yale, and a young friend of mine and also Dr. Klebs have agreed to combine their libraries with my own so that they may perhaps some day be a nucleus for a collection that would justify our establishing a professorship of the history of medicine such as exists at the Johns Hopkins in Dr. Welch's name.' The seed having fallen on fertile ground, the books were presented to Yale by Mr. Harvey's heirs, and at H.C.'s suggestion a small celebration was staged at the time of presentation. 'Large numbers of my relatives are coming on from Cleveland,' H.C. wrote Klebs on 4 January, 'and will be scattered about the house for the night in cots and shake-down emergency beds. You meanwhile are comfortably fixed at the Ritz.' The address on Perry Harvey reveals Cushing in one of his happiest veins. He had been devoted to 'Tot' Harvey since the days of his youth; they had shared lodgings at 166 York Street when they first came to Yale and during their declining years their common interest in books had brought them once again together." In the Cushing Bibliography, the essay is Cushing no. 326, published in the Yale University Library Gazette, Vol. 11, January 1937, pp. 43-52 (that issue of the journal also contains other pieces about Perry Williams Harvey, with a Check list of the John Baskerville Collection). Cushing's essay was reprinted in his book The Medical Career and Other Papers. The Cushing bibliography does not mention its appearance in the book offered here. Although Perry Harvey was not a collector of medical books, through his financial contributions he was instrumental in the acquisition of books for the Cleveland Medical Library Association (CMLA). "When Perry Harvey died in 1932, he was memorialized at the CMLA's annual meeting because of his contributions to 'many of [the library's] treasures, items which [the library] would have been unable to purchase from [its] funds' and that 'it was in keeping with his charming modesty that he permitted no public acknowledgement' " (CMLA Minutes, Vol. 6, Jan. 20, 1933, p. 427, as quoted in "Mystery Donor of the Pol Collection" by James M. Edmonson and Catherine Osborn. This article can be read online for free; search for it by its title). NOTE about photos: I can supply more photos of binding and contents, upon request. …