The Larger Catechism, Agreed upon by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster . . . the first book ever stereotyped in America.
New-York: Stereotyped and Printed by J. Watts & Co., for Whiting & Watson, Theological and Classical Booksellers, June, 1813. First edition. Contemporary calf spine, marbled boards, 7 x 4.25 inches, [2], 142 pages. Free endpapers excised; some foxing; spine rubbed, corners rather rubbed; a good copy. Item #19912
The first book printed in America from American stereotype plates: “The Philadelphia Bible Society had imported a set of Bible plates from England and took delivery of them in 1812, just before the outbreak of the war. Since that time, no other British stereotype plates had come to America, and Watts’s Larger Catechism was the only stereotyped title produced domestically” (Makala 470). Makala notes that 30 copies of this title were sent to Mathew Carey by Whiting & Watson on exchange, in part because of Carey’s own curiosity about the economic advantages of the new technology of stereotyping over his practice of keeping standing type on hand for his best-selling Bibles (Makala 467). Makala, Jeffrey. “The Early History of Stereotyping in the United States: Mathew Carey and the Quarto Bible Marketplace.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 109, no. 4 (2015): 461-89. American Imprints 30520. Some early pencil marking-up throughout in a discontented juvenile hand; some early pencil names added to the rear pastedown.
Price: $450.00