[Americana] Foote, Henry Leander. A Sketch of the Life and Adventures of Henry Leander Foote, Sentenced to be Hung in New Haven, June 19, 1850...For the Murder of Miss Emily H. Cooper...
New Haven: Printed and Published by T.J. Stafford, (1850). 12mo. 56 pp. With a wood-engraved portrait vignette of Foote on title-page and front wrapper. Original limp printed wrappers, soiling to front and rear wrappers, tape repairs on front wrapper; loss in bottom edge of entire volume, affecting imprint on front wrapper and some words in lower gutter; faint ink stamp in upper right corner of title-page; foxing and soiling to text; wrappers bound in 20th century acetate with faux-leather spine. Cohen 12568; McDade 310; OCLC 210332497
Autobiography of American murderer Henry Leander Foote, containing an account of his life, his service during the Seminole Wars, his confession to the murder of his 12-year-old cousin, and the speech he was to give from the gallows.
According to Cohen, a 53-page version of this text with a shorter and different printing of Foote's address from the gallows was printed in the same year as this 56-page version. See Cohen 12569.
We can locate only three other examples of this 56-page version: New-York Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Clements Library at the University of Michigan. Per RBH, only two other copies of this work have ever come to auction, in 1893 and 2015.
This lot is located in Philadelphia.