High Cost Living.

House Democrat Courtney Hamlin's copy. The first edition of Thomas Lawson's (1857-1925) High Cost Living, an amusing 'insider's account of the pecuniary guile of an era filled with stock market machination' (ANB).

Lawson was one of his generation's most brilliant and eccentric stockbrokers. At the age of twelve, he left school to work as an office boy with a brokerage firm in Boston, and early in his career he began speculating in stocks. 'He made a considerable "killing" in railroad shares when he was only seventeen but lost his profits a few days later in another deal... He is said to have accumulated a million dollars by the time he was thirty... Despite his lack of formal education, he acquired by his own efforts an excellent command of English and a considerable degree of literary culture' (DAB).

Limited edition, this copy being number 392 of 1000, presented to the Hon. Courtney W. Hamlin (1858-1950), the Democratic representative for Missouri in the 58th and 59th Congresses.


First edition, number 392 of 1000 copies; folio (34 x 24 cm); the Presentation for this copy inscribed in pen to the Hon. Courtney Hamilton, text in red and black, lacking the 4 full-page colour plates, old bookseller's note to front free endpaper recto, ads. to half-title verso; later red cloth retaining original free endpapers, gilt title-piece to spine; 180pp.

Dennistoun 720.