Description:

"Axe. An edge-tool for chopping ..." Lizzie Borden's signed copy of Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary, which she bought in Washington, D.C.

Book Signed "L. A. B. Washington" on the front free-endpaper. Her copy of The Concise Standard Dictionary of the English Language abridged by James C. Fernald, 583 pages, 5" x 6.5". New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1917. Illustrated. Brown cloth imprinted in black, gilt lettering on cover and spine. Minor fraying at head and tail of spine.Corners lightly bumped. Very Good condition.

Lizzie Borden is well known from this most familiar rhyme recited at the time of her 1892 murder trial (and afterwards after she was acquitted): "Lizzie Borden took an axe / And gave her mother forty whacks. / When she saw what she had done, / She gave her father forty-one."

It is interesting to note that "axe" and "murder" are listed in this dictionary.

To escape the pressures of Fall River, Massachusetts, Lizzie Borden often would take off for Washington, D.C. "Things were getting bad, so I've run away," she wrote to friends. Michael Martins, Curator of the Fall River Historical Society, said that in Washington "she could live a life without being publicly scrutinized. She loved theater, loved traveling, loved shopping." She evidently bought this book on one of her jaunts to Washington, D.C.

Anything signed by Lizzie Borden is extremely rare. In 2003, a signed copy of a book owned by her sold for $6000. Only three ALsS signed by her have sold at auction in the last 25 years, the latest bringing over $8000.

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