Edited by Maureen Harrison & Steve Gilbert

For someone who claimed he had been educated by "littles" – a little now and a little then – Abraham Lincoln displayed a remarkable facility in his use of the written word.

In the simple yet memorable eloquence of The Greatest Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, proclamations and personal correspondence are recorded in a representative collection of 22 documents.

This volume contains, complete and unabridged, the Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois (1838), which emphasized a theme Lincoln was to return to repeatedly, namely, the capacity of a people to govern themselves; the First Inaugural Address (1861), in which he appealed to the people of an already divided union for sectional harmony; the Letter to Mrs Bixby (1864), expressing Lincoln's regrets over the wartime deaths of her five sons and many more.

An invaluable reference for history students, this important volume will also fascinate admirers of Abraham Lincoln, Americana enthusiasts, Civil War buffs and any lover of the finely crafted phrase.