$450
Estimate: $400 - $600
Auction: February 18, 2021 10:00:00 AM EDT
Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1868. First edition. 12mo. 282 pp. Illustrated with frontispiece and three plates. Original brick red cloth, stamped in blind and in gilt, front and rear boards bubbling, spine ends lightly worn; all edges trimmed; pp. 39-42 slightly proud; text leaves lightly toned; book-plate on front paste-down.
"The first known novel incorporating baseball activity" (Shannon, p. 39) although Alfred Oldfellow (Alfred Beach) had actually mentioned it three years earlier, in 1865, in his "Uncle Nat; or, The Good Time Which George and Frank Had, Trapping, Fishing, Camping Out, etc." "Changing Base" is then the second novel to feature a large amount of baseball and the first to feature the game both in its title as well as in its binding decoration (bat and ball on spine). One of the illustrations, "Rice makes his Base" (opposite page 165) features a baseball game in progress, specifically a runner hugging a base, cap in the dirt beside him, baseman holding the ball that clearly arrived too late for the tag.
Everett was the son of famous orator, Edward Everett, and cousin of author Edward Everett Hale ("The Man Without a Country," etc.).