[LUDLOW, Fitz Hugh (1836-1870)]. The Hasheesh Eater: Being the Passages from the Life of Pythagorean. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1857.
8vo. (Some spotting throughout). Original blind-stamped straight grain blue cloth, gilt-lettered and stamped spine (extremities rubbed, joints gently cracked after title and at end).
Provenance: Thomas Winthrop Streeter Sr. (1883-1965), his book label. Streeter formed one of the most distinguished Americana and exploration collections that would later become part of the greatest book sale held in the United States at Parke-Bernet Galleries in 1966-69. The catalogue was published in seven volumes and with an index, becoming the most elaborate catalogue ever prepared for an American auction that would set the record for the highest grossing sale at the time; Willfried Sätty (1939-1982), German graphic artist who illustrated the 1975 limited edition of “The Hasheesh Eater”; Layne V. Witherell (gifted from Sätty for his help with the project); Michael D. Horowitz (consigned from Witherell), a notable psychoactive drug-related book collector whose collection now forms the basis to The Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library (see correspondence laid in).
STREETER’S COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST BOOK ON CANNABIS IN ENGLISH and the first full-length work of American drug literature. “A sensation when it was first published (four printings in four years), then largely forgotten until the mind-altering drug renaissance of the 1960s, and now considered a neglected masterpiece of American literature and hallucinogenic drug experience… [This] book is an account of his experiments with large, psychedelic doses of cannabis extract while a student at Union College” (Horowitz, Phantastica 153). Gamage & Zerkin, p. 62.