LIFE OF FRANKLIN PIERCE by Hawthorne Nathaniel - 1852

Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1852. First Edition. Engraved portrait frontispiece of Pierce. 8vo, publisher’s original dark brown blind-stamped cloth, gilt lettered on spine. Housed in a fine morocco backed folding case. [4] ads, 144 pp. A well preserved and fresh copy with a small abrasion to the head of the spine, housed in a 1/4 red morocco clamshell box. FIRST EDITION IN THE ORIGINAL CLOTH OF THIS HAWTHORNE SCARCITY, and one of only two American presidential political biographies written by men of letters.
Hawthorne was a college classmate and friend of Pierce's, and he wrote this during the presidential campaign of 1852. While professing objectivity, Hawthorne considered the work "a political biography, and as a representation of the principles and acts of a public man, intended to operate upon the minds of multitudes, during a presidential canvass.