Statue of Liberty Enlightening The World, Bartholdi 1885 The Statue of Liberty Enlightening The World. Described by the Sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. Published For The Benefit Of The Pedestal Fund by the North American Review, 30 Lafayette Place, New York, with an illustrated frontis of the Statue of Liberty, copyrighted By Allen Thorndike Rice 1885 and printed by the American Banknote Company, with a copy of a note from the dying French author Victor Hugo, numerous woodcuts and 66 pages of text and engravings. If you don’t know the story of the statue, it was designed by French sculptor Frederic Bartholdi as a gift from the French people, the metal frame was built by Gustave Eiffel, who also designed the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and it was dedicated on October 28, 1886 - and it almost did not make it because there were problems in raising funds for the pedestal - the base - for the statue. Bartholdi sailed to the United States in 1871 and saw Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor and was struck by the way ships arriving in New York had to sail past the island, and chose this island as the site for the statue. He started building the statue in 1875, with the understanding that the French would pay for the statue and the Americans would pay for the pedestal, but fundraising proved difficult, and by 1885 work on the pedestal was threatened by lack of funds. Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of a New York, newspaper, announced a drive to raise $100,000—the equivalent of $2.3 million today - and he pledged to print the name of every contributor in this newspaper, no matter how small the amount given. The drive captured the imagination of New Yorkers, and after five months of daily calls to donate to the fund, in August 1885, he announced that $102,000 had been raised from 120,000 donors, and most of that had been received in sums of less than one dollar (equivalent to $30 in today’s money). The statue was built in sections in France and reassembled in the United States, and even with the success of the fund drive, the pedestal was not completed until April 1886, and this book was published to help raise money for the pedestal. Bedloe’s Island is now called Liberty Island, the statue was named Liberty Enlightening the World, and the statue still greets visitors when they arrive in New York harbor. The book measures 9 x 7 in. wide, it comes in a fitted dust jacket, with an interior cover in pale green wraps, it has chips and creases along the edges of the cover, offset on the title page from the frontispiece of the Statue of Liberty and offset on the last page from the rear cover, and a wonderful resource about the history of the statue. There are no known copies of this original piece offered online, only modern reprints, so a rare book as well, and this is one of the original books that were sold to raise money for the pedestal of the statue. #54 #1710