This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/26/2022
[EUGENICS]. [GRANT, Madison (1865–1937)]. A large collection of books and periodicals from the personal library of Madison Grant. Consisting of 55 books and 29 pamphlets and magazines which once belonged to conservationist and eugenicist Madison Grant. Includes numerous volumes with personal inscriptions from noted authors on the subject of eugenics to Madison Grant, among them Clinton Stoddard Burr, Sir Harry H. Johnson, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Graham Renshaw, Kenneth L. Roberts, and others. Many volumes exhibit Grant’s armorial bookplate engraved by Arthur Nelson MacDonald, with a few books SIGNED BY GRANT himself. Periodicals include issues of Eugenical News. All 8vos and 4tos. Overall condition generally good. Complete list available upon request. In addition to being a noted lawyer, philanthropist, conservationist, and writer, Madison Grant was a vocal proponent of eugenics, immigration restrictions, and anti-miscegenation laws, thus creating a problematic legacy for a man who, though a key figure in the conservation movement, also directly influenced the perpetrators of some of the greatest human rights atrocities in the whole of human history. Madison Grant counted among his direct descendants Jesse de Forest, who in 1623 organized the first band of settlers in what was then New Netherland, Richard Treat, one of the first Puritan settlers in the New World, and Robert Treat Paine, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Being born into a wealthy and notable American family immediately qualified Grant for admission into the inner sanctums of New York society, and he counted among his close friends a small, sickly boy named Theodore Roosevelt. The narrative of “race suicide” became an extremely popular one amongst the American elite following the end of the Civil War, and as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth ever more pseudo-scientific means were deployed to persuade and ultimately directly influence public policy against integration not only of former slaves but also of Jews, Catholics, Asians, immigrants, and the mentally disabled. Grant’s passion for the maintenance of natural spaces was also rooted in the need for “purity,” and he was a constant voice in the ear of close friend and fellow conservationist President Theodore Roosevelt when Roosevelt signed legislation which effectively created the National Parks system. What Grant succeeded in doing was taking multiple strands of pseudo–scientific race theory outlined in countless books published in the United States and Europe and weaving them into a single narrative, which he then published in 1916 as “The Passing of the Great Race”. The book was praised by Theodore Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Adolf Hitler, who called it “my Bible.” One of the men who reached out to Grant following publication of “The Passing of the Great Race” was a representative from the state of Washington, Albert Johnson, and through Johnson Grant saw many like-minded allies installed into positions of power within the United States government; among them was Harry Laughlin, who Johnson named as The Committee on Immigration’s “expert eugenics agent.” In 1924 Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act, also known as the Immigration Act. This law further worsened the already-tense relationship between the United States and Japan and contributed greatly to the Jewish refugee crisis of the 1930s and 40s; both would become key issues as the United States was drawn into the conflict then engulfing Europe and threatening to consume the entire globe. Grant would continue to be cited as an influence by the Nazi regime throughout its short existence. He died mere months before he was to join Prime Minister Hermann Goering at the International Hunting Exhibition in Berlin, an event which Grant himself helped to organize.