The Codicil

The Codicil is a work by Henry Howard Harper, the American businessman, writer, and book collector who lived from 1871 to 1953 and who was the founder of the Bibliophile Society of Boston, one of the most active American private book collecting organisations of the early twentieth century. Harper produced a substantial body of his own writing alongside his book collecting and editorial activities, and his various books were typically issued in limited editions by the Bibliophile Society or by other small press organisations.

A codicil in legal terminology is a supplementary document attached to a will that modifies, adds to, or revokes provisions of the original will. The title suggests that the book uses the legal device as the organising concept for a narrative or reflective work involving inheritance, family relationships, and the various complications that can arise from the formal and informal arrangements that govern the transfer of property and obligations across generations.

Harper’s writing typically combined the kind of literary and reflective interest that his bibliophile background suggests with substantial attention to the practical business and legal subjects that his career as a successful Boston businessman had given him substantial familiarity with. He wrote in the cultivated literary mode that the Boston literary world of the early twentieth century favoured and produced books that were intended for the kind of educated leisured reader who participated in the substantial private book collecting culture of the period.

The specific contents of The Codicil depend on the particular treatment Harper chose for his subject matter. The book could be a piece of short fiction, a reflective essay, a fictionalised memoir, or some combination of these modes. Harper’s various works in his other publications combine elements of all these genres in different proportions.

The book is mostly of interest now to readers of early twentieth century American limited edition publishing and to those interested in the substantial Boston bibliophile culture that Harper was central to. The Bibliophile Society publications generally are valued by collectors for their substantial production quality and their substantial limited print runs. The Codicil belongs to this broader publication tradition.

For readers approaching Harper’s work, the broader context of early twentieth century American private press and limited edition publishing provides the natural framework.