An Account of the Life of that Ancient Servant of Jesus Christ, John Richardson, Giving a Relation of Many of his Trials and Exercises in his Youth, and his Services in the Work of the Ministry, in England Ireland and America.
Bolton, (Mass.): Re-Published by Daniel Cooledge, 10th mo. 1807. Evidently a reissue of the sheets of the 1783 American edition. 8vo (8.13 x 5.13 inches), contemporary tooled leather cover mounted over the boards and secured with pasted-down free endpapers, red morocco spine label visible through cut window, [2], vi, 236 pages. Some foxing and light wear; the leather cover is a bit rubbed in spots, but overall a quite handsome and very good copy. Item #20881
A curious instance of subscription publication, with the printed notice at the foot of the subscription list, “The design of the intended publisher, of a new Edition of the Life of John Richardson, bring frustrated by a competent number of Subscribers not being returned, and he hearing of an old Edition, printed many years since in Philadelphia, and feeling willing to gratify the solicitude of those who were anxious to obtain them, has purchased enough to supply those who have subscribed. And as the quality and size of the Book is as much as one third better than a new Edition could be afforded at the subscription price, he presumes none will object to receiving them; but if so, they are left to their choice.”
First published in London in 1757 (with subsequent English editions), Richardson’s journal was first published in Philadelphia by Dunlap in 1759 as an appendage to Bownas’s Journal, then separately published by Cruikshank in 1783; this issue would seem to have been a practical solution to the professed publication problems on the part of Cooledge and his subscription plan.
Cooledge seems to have had roots in Worcester County, Mass., though he appears by this point to have shifted operations to Walpole, New Hampshire, at least per a brief account in the “Notes & Queries” of the 11th month 1912 issue of the Bulletin of the Friends Historical Society of Philadelphia. (Cooledge reappears in the columns of Marcus McCorison’s paper in PBSA 104:2, “Printers and the Law: The Trials of Publishing Obscene Libel in Early America,” where our Friend is ratting out Vermont printers in an 1818 letter to the governor of New Hampshire for publishing two clandestine editions of Fanny Hill; McCorison characterizes Cooledge as a Quaker bookbinder.)
This copy with the ink autograph inscription opposite the title page, “No. 24. - $0.85 Second Social Library in Royalston, April 1st, 1812,” with a note in another hand below that, “Let out to Lyman Ruggle.”
With contemporary tallow
A brief note to the rear blank remarks, “Page 127 two tallow spots” (uncommon explicit evidence of the use of lighting while reading) and another note regarding the text below that.
American Imprints 13497; Sabin 71023; see Evans 18158 & ESTC W10111 for the Cruikshank edition of vi, 236, [2] pages.
Price: $650.00