Historic Airships

Philadelphia, PA: Macrae Smith Company, 1928. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good. Manning deV Lee. Format is approximately 7 inches by 9.5 inches. Burgundy cover with blue and gold decoration, including a plane in flight. 343, [1] pages. Illustrated endpapers. Color frontis illustration. Illustrations. Foreword by Commander Richard E. Byrd. Cover has some wear and soiling. Number stamped in ink at rep. Rupert Sargent Holland (1878-1952) was an American author. His works include: Historic Airships (1928), Historic Boyhoods (1909), The Boy Scouts of Birchbark Island (1911), The Boy Scouts of Snowshoe Lodge (1915) and King Arthur and The Knights of the Round Table. Among the topics addressed are: Balloon, Santos-Dumont, Wilbur Wright, Orville Wright, Dirigible, Zeppelins, Military Aviation, and Charles Lindbergh. On July 5, 1916 Manning de V. Lee served as a private in Battery D of the 1st Virginia Field Artillery at Fort Myer. He served in Mexico during the border war. After that conflict he was released from duty on March 14, 1917. He immediately re-enlisted and served overseas as a lieutenant in the Great War. He was honorably discharged on April 14, 1919. After the war, Manning de V. Lee, resumed his art education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. On June 18, 1921 he traveled to Europe on the Steam Ship Finland to visit England, France and Italy to study art on a travel scholarship, which was the top honor awarded to senior art students at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1922 Manning de V. Lee completed his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. One of his fellow graduates was Henry Weston Taylor (1881-1978), who went on to a successful career as a newspaper cartoonist. Lee and Taylor shared an art studio in Philadelphia at 234 Walnut Street. In 1926 Manning de V. Lee contributed illustrations to the yearbook of the U.S. Naval Academy of Annapolis, MD. That same year he also began to illustrate the juvenile magazine St. Nicholas. On June 22, 1929 the Book Of The Month selection included a book illustrated by Manning de V. Lee. In 1931 Manning de V. Lee's illustrations began to appear in American Boy Magazine.