New York: Leavitt and Allen, (1856-1861).
Price: $1,000.00
Hardcover. Friendship book. Octavo. Full red decorated morocco, all edges gilt. Illustrated with black and white prints of landscapes. Some foxing, one page loose, covers worn with part of spine missing. Owned by Mary Low, this friendship book (sort of like a school yearbook) is inscribed by over forty people, with poems, brief messages of friendship, or religious verse. Some of the people who wrote in the book were Low's family and friends. A majority were her fellow students at the Ladies Collegiate Institute, a short-lived, all-female college in Worcester, Massachusetts. The president of the institute, Werden Reynolds (elected in 1859) also signed the book. The Ladies Collegiate Institute was incorporated in 1854 and opened in 1856. It was located in Davis Hall, which was built in 1852 by the architect Elbridge Boyden, who would later design Worcester's St. Paul's Cathedral. From 1852 to 1854, the building housed the Worcester Medical College. In 1855, the Ladies Collegiate Institute took over the property, only to close in 1860-1861. A nice souvenir of a short-lived enterprise, one of the early educational institutions dedicated to women's higher learning.
Item #99202
