Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte, Sloane 1906. This four-volume set by William Milligan Sloane is titled “Life of Napoleon Bonaparte” and was published in New York by the Century Co. in 1906. It is a complete set, with maps, text, and colored, tinted, and black-and-white illustrations that convey the full scope of Napoleon’s life. Sloane (11850 - 19128) was an American educator and historian, and Professor of History at Princeton University. He taught the classics in Pittsburgh, then he studied at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig for four years, and he worked as private secretary to George Bancroft, United States Minister at Berlin. He taught at Princeton and Columbia, and served on the International Olympic Committee from 1894 to 1924 and was founder and chairman of the United States Olympic Committee, and he was president of the American Historical Association. Other honors were the Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor and the Order of the Polar Star from Sweden (for civic merit, devotion to duty, science, literary and useful works, and for benefitting new institutions), so he had impressive credentials. The expansive biography includes details about Napoleon's youth in Corsica and showed that Napoleon’s childhood had a major impact on his life and rule, and the books cover his personal and military life, from his rise to emperor all the way to his death in exile. The biography also looks at Napoleon’s marriage to Josephine and their divorce, and his proxy marriage to Marie Louise, the great niece of the former Queen of France Marie Antoinette. Each book has vellum spines with horizontal gilt bands at the top and bottom, gray-green cloth covers and blank endpapers, they have a full-color frontispiece before the title page, and all the top edges are gilt. Volume I has a large colored frontis of Napoleon on horseback, reproduced from an original painting owned by the Duc de Morny, the title page and a three-page Preface, a six-page Table of Contents, a two-page List of Illustrations, and 283 pages of text. Volume II has a colored frontis of Napoleon with the Savants in Africa, a six-page Table of Contents, again a two-page List of Illustrations, and 283 pages of text. The third volume has a colored frontis titled “1807 - Friedland”, with six pages for a Table of Contents, a two-page List of Illustrations, and 270 pages of text, and the last volume has a colored frontis of Napoleon leaving the French army at Smorgoni, a small town in Russia, where Napoleon’s army suffered from the bitter cold and winter; there’s a five-page Table of Contents, a two-page List of Illustrations, 248 pages of text, followed by thirteen pages of Historical Sources - a bibliography of the books and sources Sloane used in his research - then an Index that runs from 263 to 313. The books are 4to.and measure 12 3/8 x 9 in. wide at the base and are in very fine condition. The bindings are tight and the pages and texts are very clean and bright, the maps and illustrations are clean and bright, with no evidence of foxing or offset. The only apologies are some initials in red lettering on the front paste-down and a small oval where a sticker label was removed from the top corner of the front free endpaper in Volume I, there are light scratches on the covers of the last volume, the vellum spines are pretty bright, with just a little bit of soiling, and that’s it. A very attractive set, and Sloane's Life of Napoleon is a cornerstone for any Napoleonic collection. #168 #1558