Illustrated Edition of Patchwork Child, Signed by Brooke Astor
[Signed by Brooke Astor] Astor, Brooke. Patchwork Child. Illustrated Edition. 1993. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition. Signed “Brooke Astor” in blue ink on the half title page.
Long before she became New York’s most celebrated philanthropist, Brooke Astor was an only child growing up in an globe-traveling military family. As the daughter of a naval officer, she spent her youth in Imperial China, Hawaii, Panama, and Washington, D.C., experiences that fostered both intellectual curiosity and a lifelong love of reading. As a young girl she found herself discussing Buddhism with monks at the Temple of One Hundred Courtyards outside Peking, the sort of experience that might seem improbable in the childhood of a future society grande dame. This memoir of her early years is charming in its own right, but it also serves as a revealing prologue to the remarkable life that followed. The inquisitive, adventurous child who emerges from these pages is unmistakably the woman Brooke Astor would become.
“I am forever grateful to my parents. They were not at all alike in character, but they loved each other and they loved me.”
--Brooke Astor