The History of the Old and New Testament, Interspersed with Moral and Instructive Reflections, Chiefly Taken from the Holy Fathers. From the French. By J. Reeve. The Third Edition.
Philadelphia: Printed by M. Steiner, in Race-street, for C. Talbot, late of Dublin, Printer and Bookseller, 1784. First American edition. 8vo (7.88 x 5.25 inches), original plain calf, vi, [2], 536 [i.e., 436] pages. Scuffed and rubbed and worn, with the spine label more or less perished; some stains and foxing; a good, sound copy. Item #20230
Bibliographia Catholica Americana includes a note from John Gilmary Shea, "in my opinion the first book issued in this country by a Catholic bookseller." A broad summary paraphrase of the Bible, preceding the publication of Carey's Vulgate Bible in 1790; an early owner's family seems to have treated this volume as a family Bible, recording deaths and births in the endpapers; this copy includes an ink note on the rear free endpaper, "Henry Green his Book Bought of the Reverent [sic] mr. Neall price 15/." This work includes a two-page subscription list; among the listed subscribers, one finds Rev. Leonard Neale (eventual president of Georgetown and Archbishop of Baltimore) taking six copies, presumaby this copy numbered among them. Finotti's Martin I. J. Griffin later notes a handful of other publications from Talbot, who seems to have been followed in the field by Lloyd and then Mathew Carey. Griffin, Martin I. J. "CHRISTOPHER TALBOT, THE FIRST CATHOLIC PUBLISHER IN THE UNITED STATES." Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 15, no. 2 (1904): 121-24. Accessed May 13, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44207869. ESTC W12743: "A free translation of Nicolas Fontaine’s La Bible de Royaument." Evans 18471.
Price: $750.00