8vo. 286pp. Finely bound by Riviere (stamp-signed to FEP) in contemporary richly gilt-tooled buff morocco, contrasting black and brown morocco lettering-pieces, A.E.G. Lightly rubbed and marked, with light wear to joints. Scattered spotting. Inked gift inscription addressed to J. T. Coleridge, 'on his seventy second birthday from his children, J. D. Coleridge and J. F. Coleridge, 9th July. 1862'.

A Coleridge family copy of the first English edition, finely bound by Riviere, of American physician and fireside poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.'s (1809-1894) internationally successful prose work, the second of three table-talk books in his best-selling 'Breakfast-Tables' sequence. Beginning with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858), Holmes' prose works often consist of collections of philosophical, moral, and scientific questions, presented in a conversational manner by a 'qualified' persona; in this instance, Holmes' speaker is a professor of a distinguished medical school, reflecting his own experience as a lecturer of anatomy and physiology.