History of the Reign of Philip the Second. [Complete in Two Volumes]

Boston, MA: Phillips, Sampson & Co, 1855. First American Edition. Hardcover. Very Good+. No DJ as Issued.. First American Edition. Hardcover. Does not include the later printed (1858) third volume, left unfinished at Prescott's death. Finely bound for Peter Augustus Jay. From the library of Susan Mary Alsop. Born Susan Mary Jay in Rome in 1918, she was the daughter of Peter Augustus Jay (and Susan Alexander McCook) and granddaughter of Augustus Jay (and Emily Astor Kane), both statesmen, legates and/or ambassadors (in Europe, Asia and South America). The Jays, a Huguenot family, produced John Jay, co-author of the Federalist Papers, Foreign Secretary and the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Many of the volumes from her library were from that of her father and grandfather and are so inscribed (as noted). Susan Mary [Jay] Alsop, in addition to being one of the great political hostesses in Washington's circles, was an author in her own right, producing a noted biography of Vita Sackville-West's mother, "Lady Sackville" (1978); and also "Yankees at the Court: The First Americans in Paris" (1982), and "The Congress Dances: Vienna 1814-1815" (1984). Light shelf/edge wear, light rubbing to boards, minor foxing at preliminaries and at plate pages (related to tissueguards), else tight, (very) bright and unmarred. Full brown calf leather, five raised bands, light brown leather labels, gilt lettering, in blind decorative elements, marbled endpages, frontispiece(s), tissueguards, red stain at textblock edges. 8vo. xxxvi, 618pp; xvii, 610pp. Illus. (b/w plates).