Holmes’s “Urania”
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. Autograph manuscript signed from “Urania” including excerpts from the original manuscript
No Place, ca. 1846
Two pages. With a fair copy of another portion or “Urania: A Rhymed Lesson,” one page, written in 1893. Beautifully presented in blue morocco gilt with two engraved portraits and a printed copy of the complete poem.
A portion of the original manuscript for “Urania.” These two pages (paginated 5 and 6) are evidently from the original working manuscript. They feature several manuscript corrections. The passage begins with the lines “O could such mockery reach our soul indeed” and ends “Full to thine ear it bears the Father’s word.”
Holmes first read this long narrative poem before the Mercantile Library Association on 14 October 1846; it was subsequently published in Boston. The North American Review declared it “a very lively and beautiful poem.” That long laudatory review observed, “There are golden hours of leisure even in the practice of a successful physician, and these at least may be consecrated to more ambitious uses.”
$3,600