Rare Book Monthly
All Politics Is Local: Books of Millie O'Neill and Speaker of the House Thomas P. O'Neill Jr.
First Day Cover, January 4, 1977, original autograph from the Everyday Library of Millie O’Neill and Speaker of the House Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr.
Over time, Geraldine and Chessie got to know each other better, and then dragged their people into the mix. There were the usual conversations about who does what and where. In the end, instead of the tag sale and the Treasure Chest, some twenty boxes of books were delivered to our doorstep, hauled over by a family friend in a pick-up truck. Rose’s Books, through some strange serendipity, was now the proud owner of the everyday library of Millie O’Neill and her husband, Speaker of the House Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., one of the great American leaders of the twentieth century.
Like many booksellers we purchase a great deal of stock anonymously. Auctions, going-out-of-business sales, library sales, on-line sales all supply us with huge amounts of material that we regularly comb through looking for the unusual and rare, fine first editions, signed and association copies, decorative bindings and interesting illustrations. However, we’ve always enjoyed buying the books collected by one person, as they allow us to engage in a kind of intellectual forensics which makes the entire sifting process more interesting.
The O’Neill’s library did not disappoint. Tip and Millie bought and kept the books they liked to have around and they were given books by their children, friends and admirers, as well as people either currying influence or responding to some political favor. We found about seventy-five books signed and inscribed to the Speaker by their authors, many with long, personal messages. Like any other collection of political writing, these inscriptions flatter, cajole, beg, and express affection. The overall tone of the inscriptions is skewed to the positive; if hate mail arrived in the Speaker’s Rooms, it did not arrive on the title pages of books, or at least not on books that were kept. Whether the inscriptions were sincere or not, they certainly spoke to the Speaker’s popularity and authority.
“For Speaker O’Neill, with admiration and warm regards, from Dan Boorstin, December 1980” wrote the Librarian of Congress and Pulitzer Prize winner politely (and somewhat obsequiously) on the front endpaper of a handsome oversize first edition of Treasures of the Library of Congress by Charles A. Goodrum. Daniel Boorstin may have been the Librarian of Congress, but it wasn’t Dan and Tip, it was Dan and Speaker O’Neill. Even the world-class Library of Congress has to get its budget from somewhere. Published in 1980 by Harry N. Abrams, the book and jacket of Treasures are in fine condition — kept carefully by the O’Neills.
