Felix Cunha, a Chicago gastroenterologist and medical historian, had 125 copies of his stories about alchemists and old medicine privately printed in 1939. He signed this copy for Dr. Leonard Carmichael, apparently the psychologist who later became Smithsonian secretary; that identification still needs confirming.
In 1858 Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch, a Boston lawyer and antiquarian, inscribed his enlarged second edition of Suffolk Surnames to the Boston writer James S. Loring. In 1902 Edwin Reed’s argument that Francis Bacon, not Shakespeare, wrote the plays went out “with compliments of the author,” apparently to a Willard Howland. And James W. Symington, a former Chief of Protocol, signed his 1971 memoir of diplomatic ceremony “from the player,” for a recipient whose name is not certain.
A dedication is evidence that a book was given. It is not evidence that it was read.
Privately printed in 125 copies, and signed for a friend.
From the author, a Boston lawyer, to a Boston writer.
The author’s case for Bacon, sent with his compliments.
Signed “from the player.”
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