Provenance:  Contemporary ownership signature at top of title-page: “J. Store's [book].”

•  Not in Evans. Bristol 4313; Shipton & Mooney 43119; Trumbull, Connecticut, 1214; Johnson, New London, 1047; Adams, American Independence, 222r; Grolier, American One Hundred, 14 (for first edition). This edition not in Sabin or Howes.   Uncut and stitched as issued. Title-page age-toned, lightly soiled and lightly abraded. Lower margin of pp. 29–30 torn with loss of three words on 29 and four on 30; supplied for reading sense. Housed in quarter red morocco clamshell case, spine nicely gilt, with an inner paper chemise protecting the pamphlet.  (29365)

Also attracting renewed interest was The Declaration of Independence: Americans and especially several entrepreneurs rediscovered the majesty of it and its wording. But it was not the Declaration as it came from a printing press that was of interest, rather it was the version indited by Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress. Coincidentally, this interest in the manuscript coincided with an upswing in the general upspringing writing masters and the publication of writing books that taught clerks, storekeepers, secretaries, and the interested populace how to write clearly and elegantly.

One of those entrepreneurial writing masters was Benjamin Owen Tyler and in 1818 he publishedthe first facsimile of the Declaration in its manuscript form. In 1817 he travelled to Washington and obtained the permission of Acting Secretary of State Richard Rush (son of Signer Benjamin Rush) to have access to the original manuscript so that he could engross his facsimile. As the facsimile proclaims: “The publisher designed and executed the ornamental writing, and has been particular to copy the facsimilies exact, and has also observed the same punctuation, and copied every capital as in the original.” The engraving also contains in attestation a facsimile signed statement of Richard Rush dated 10 September 10 and the seal of the Secretary of State's Office authenticating the copy.

The Tyler Declaration is not a one-to-one reproduction of the 1776 manuscript, for it incorporates decorative lettering not found in Thomson's original. But it certainly gives a feel for the original and it was a great advertising vehicle for Tyler as a writing master.

The whole LARGE production wasengraved by Peter Maverick, one of America's master engravers, and printed on paper with a few copies on parchment and at least one on silk. Many other facsimiles would follow. . .

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 46130.; Nash 87; John Bidwell, “American History in Image and Text” in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 1988, Vol. 98, pp. 247–302.   Document backed onto linen, edged with red linen tape, well-attached to an ebonized wood molding at head and roller at foot; age-toned or possibly showing discoloration from the mounting adhesive. One small piece of blank margin expertly readhered; some creasing. Overall very good. An impressive American document evoking not one but two significant patriotic periods, and one in safe and attractive condition for display.   (In its picture, it's hanging for the time being on one of our shop walls — comfortably!)   (29408)

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for an enlargement.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 42652.   Removed from a nonce volume; inner edge slightly irregular. Leaves once separated, now re-attached at inner edge with transparent tape. Clean, with only a little darkening along inner margins.  (18246)

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The anonymously published work is signed “An Antiepiscopalian”; the title-page here bears a hand-inked attribution to Matthew Wilson.

An important entry in the literature of the “American Bishops” controversy in the lead-up to the American Revolution.

•  ESTC W13420; Evans 10947; Felcone 126; Hildeburn 2370; Sabin 11876.   Recent binding: boards appealingly covered in paper printed with 18th-century music, front cover with printed paper label. Two pages (not including title) institutionally rubber-stamped. Title-page with early inked ownership inscription and annotations, later lined through, with authorial attribution in the later hand. Lacking pp. 17/18, with final leaf tattered and text on p. 19 lined-through-by-show-through of X'es “deleting” manuscript notes on the verso (still, readable). Pages age-toned and lightly spotted, with edges untrimmed. One leaf with early inked annotation along outer margin.  (28100)

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As is the case with the 70 p. issue, the first 16 p. are the same sheets as appear in the original [Richmond, April 1792] edition (Evans 26580), and were probably printed in 1791. Evans, however, postulates that the first 16 p. were printed by Dobson in September 1792. He accounts for their presence in copies of the [Richmond] edition of 60 p. by suggesting that Asplund substituted the corrected Philadelphia sheets for the unsatisfactory sheets of the earlier edition. Cf. the prefaces to the 1794 and 1796 editions, with title: The universal register of the Baptist denomination.”

In addition to its exhaustive account of who's who and what's where, this lists both principles of belief and “Rules of Decorum”; the latter, e.g., forbid laughing and whispering when another member of the association is speaking in assembly. Between the “Rules of Decorum” and the Index, Asplund remarks on the un-Christian “inconsistency” of “Keeping our fellow-creatures in bondage, who have as good a right was we, both to civil and religions liberty — Not only so; but misusing them, concerning common blessings, which certainly is a violation of the rights of nature and inconsistent with a republican government.”

•  Evans 26582; ESTC W37302.   Uncut copy. In 20th-century black buckram binding. Ex-library with bookplate but no other markings.  (24467)

•  ESTC W35823; Evans 35119. Contemporary sheep, spine with red leather title label; abraded with a few wormholes (including one track across spine) and front joint opening. Some pages quite stained, not impairing reading; a couple instances of chipping in margins with loss of letters. Front free endpaper excised. Pp. 433–44 pinned together in the inside margin. Pencil doodlings on half-title and p. [5].

•  Very good condition. Written in a clear, easy-to-read hand; attractively, as well as sensibly, laid out on the pages.  (27600)