ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE PRAIRIE YEARS [and] ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE WAR YEARS by [Lincoln, Abraham]; Sandburg Carl - [1926]; 1939

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company , [1926]; 1939. 6 volumes. First edition. With over 105 illustrations from photographs, and many sketches, maps, cartoons and letters throughout the Prairie Years and with 426 half-tones of photographs, and 244 cuts of cartoons, letters and documents throughout War Years. Large, thick 8vo, publisher’s original full blue polished buckram with Lincoln's signature embossed in blind on the upper covers, and with gilt lettered and ruled spines. xvi, 480; vi, 482 including index.; xxxi, 660; xi, 655; xiii, 673; xii, 515 + index pp. A very handsome set, extremely well preserved, the cloth is clean and with bright gilt, the text is very fine and clean in both parts, a bit of very minor general mellowing to the spines of the Prairie Years volumes. FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE GREAT HISTORICAL WORKS CONCERNING ABRAHAM LINCOLN, WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE, AND STILL THE BEST AND MOST DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF THE GREAT AMERICAN PRESIDENT.
Carl Sandburg was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his Complete Poems (1950), and then again for his Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939).
In a real sense, this is the definitive biography of Lincoln, illustrated with photographs and reproductions of paintings, drawings and sketches. Carl Sandburg felt a close tie to Abraham Lincoln because of similar childhood experiences. Sandburg’s and Lincoln’s youths had not been easy. Their understanding of the common man was mutual. Each in his own lifetime would think of himself as a common man, a struggler from among ordinary people, according to one historian. Sandburg put it this way: “There’s a certain level of human existence below which one must sometime have lived if one is to really know the ways of the masses.”
Reviewers from all over the world called Sandburg’s book a classic. Sandburg, with a reputation as a labor advocate, gained favor with Republicans. After the first two volumes were published, William Randolph Hearst offered Sandburg a job with substantial pay and the Republican Party invited him to be the main speaker at the Lincoln Dinner. When Sandburg died in 1967, it was said of him what he had once said of Lincoln: “Now he belongs to the ages.”..Franchere