Old Grimes

Providence: Sidney S. Rider & Brothers, 1867. 8vo.  240 x 175 mm., [9 1/2 x 7 inches].  14 ff., printed recto only.  Illustrated throughout with wood engravings by N(athan) Orr & Co., after designs by Augustus Hoppin.  Red publisher's cloth, gilt title and narrative design on upper board and in blind on the lower board; cloth faded to a muddy brown, head and tail of spine chipped, joints rubbed, corners and edges with some loss of cloth; text block clean; binding tight.Only edition of Albert G. Greene's poem on the legacy of an old man's life.  Greene was a Providence  lawyer, educated at Brown, who rose in the ranks of the legal profession to become Judge of the Municipal Courts.  He was a founder of the Providence Athenaeum  and President of the Rhode Island Historical Society.  Greene amassed a large collection of American poetry, which became the basis of the Harris Collection, now at Brown University.  The text of each verse is set with wood engraved border designed by the Providence painter Augustus Hoppin, who was a prolific book illustrator and sometimes wood engraver.   The engravings were executed by Nathan Orr of New York.  Nathan, along with his older brother John William were principles in the most important engraving business in the North East and were closely associated with Harper's Weekly, where they produced woodcuts from the 1860's to the 1880's.  Sinclair Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers,  884.   Carl Cannon, American Book Collectors,  p. 180.  Mantle Fielding, Dictionary of American Painters, p. 265.  Appleton's Encyclopaedia of American Biography, II p. 747-48.