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.

Evidence of Readership: Title-page with early inked ownership inscription and annotations, later lined through, with authorial attribution in the later hand; one leaf with early inked annotation along outer margin. Verso of last leaf presents calculations andsomeone's reading list; later X'ed out; among the titles read, intended for reading, or just imaginably noted as not for reading are The Rival Mothers, Pamela or Virtue Rewarded, and Love in a Village.

•  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. 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); annotations as above. Pages age-toned and lightly spotted, with edges untrimmed.  (28100)

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 1953. On Brown, see: Dictionary of National Biography, VII, 37–38 (under William Laurence Brown). Relatively unworn library buckram; library name pressure-stamped on covers and its bookplate to front pastedown. Hinges reinforced at rebinding with cloth and first few pages fragile along line of reinforcement; front free endpaper separated. Title-page and a few others faintly stamped, title-page with crossed-out ownership inscription. Some offsetting; a very few instances of pencilled underlining; corners occasionally dog-eared or chipped. Overall a fairly decent copy, suffering a bit from earlier "conservation." (2740)

nothing new since my last, exceptCapt. Barney in the ship Hyder Aly taking the King ship Monk of 10 nine pounders, in an action of 30 minutes. The Hyder Aly mounted 6 nines & 10 sixes, there never was more execution done by the same force in the same time. The Monk had every officer except two, killed or wounded, amongst the latter was the Capt. She had in all 21 kill'd & 32 wounded. The Hyder Aly had 4 kill'd & 11 wounded, from such slaughter no doubt you'd conclude one of them boarded, but it was not the case, a fair action within pistol shot.

Although the land battles of the American Revolution had ended with the surrender at Yorktown, sea battles continued until receipt of the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The account above refers to Comm. Joshua Barney's capture on 8 April off Cape May, NJ, of the sloop of war General Monk. In a wonderful twist of fate, the intrepid Barney had only arrived in Philadelphia in March — having been occupied since the previous May with his escape, recapture, and second escape from Portsmouth prison! into which stronghold he had been clapped by the British for his previous maritime (infr)actions.

Having, then, been given command of the Hyder Ally (a.k.a., Hyder Ali) only a few weeks previously, and having been charged with clearing the Delaware River and Bay of privateers, Barney had met the General Monk while pursuing that task — and, in a Revolutionary War naval action eclipsed only by that of the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis, took on and thoroughly defeated a King's ship of superior firepower in a bloody, 26-minute battle.

Following this capture of the General Monk, Congress voted Barney a sword for his gallantry and offered him command of his prize after renaming her General Washington. In November, 1782, he was ordered to sail to France in the Washington with dispatches for Benjamin Franklin who was negotiating the Treaty of Paris. He returned with news of the signing of the preliminary peace treaty and with money from the French.

Barney was an American Hornblower!

•  On Barney, see: Dictionary of American Biography and Appleton's Cyclopedia.   Very good condition. Small blank portion of the integral address leaf torn with loss where the sealing wax was attached. Old dealer's (Sessler's) coding in pencil at base of letter.  (31069)

•  Publisher's embossed cloth, spine with gilt-stamped title; corners and spine extremities showing minor wear, with gilt oxidized. Front free endpaper with pencilled inscription; some page edges with small blotches. Binding very handsome in its subtle way. Impossible! to get a good image of!  (12986)

•  Publisher's red cloth, stamped in gilt on the spine. New.  (21048)

New Jersey

Vol. I opens with a steel-engraved portrait of the author, done by Henry Cook after Hervé; vol. III is illustrated with an oversized, folding plate of a water-engine intended for millwork, devised by the author, and a plate of another of his inventions: the automated “chamber fire escape”, which enables anyone to lower him- or herself from a high window. This is the third edition, following the first of 1807.

•  NSTC H625; Sabin 30461.   Contemporary speckled sheep, spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels; vol. I with joints and extremities refurbished, vols. II and III with spines and edges rubbed, old strips of library tape reinforcing spine heads. Ex–social club library: 19th-century bookplates, call number on endpapers, pressure-stamp on title-pages, vols. II and III with paper shelving labels at top of spines (vol. I showing signs of now-absent label). Vol. I title-page with offsetting from frontispiece; vol. III with pp. 69–72 excised (two leaves of a rather long religious-themed letter from Harriott to his son) and with upper portion of one leaf crumpled, reinforced some time ago. Some light age-toning, intermittent small spots of foxing and ink-staining, pages generally clean. Utterly absorbing.  (30651)

Provenance:  Front pastedown with early inked ownership inscription of James Beatty; two additional similar inscriptions dated 1825 and 1826. First preface page with genealogical annotations regarding the Beatty family, including remarks on the Staten Island Moravian Church's acquisition of John Beatty's land, and a note that the James Beatty who owned this volume was the son of that donor; all three generations of Beattys were strong supporters of the Moravian Church.

•  Howes L474; Field 952; Sabin 42110; ESTC T88588.   Contemporary mottled sheep, shellacked, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-stamped compartment decorations; front cover with small abrasions, joints and extremities rubbed, spine with leather cracked (at one point deeply) and and chipped at head, joints starting from head and foot but binding still holding nicely. Map lacking. inner page portions with irregular semicircular of browning, sometimes deep into pages, sometimes quite shallow; old waterstaining across lower outer corners at beginning and end of volume only. Occasional other stains; occasional pencilled underlining.  (29265)

Binding:  Mid- to late-19th-century binding, with binder’s ticket of the True American Bindery of Trenton, NJ.

•  Half morocco with marbled paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped titles and blind-stamped decorative devices; edges and sides moderately rubbed with a bit of paper skinned from cover of vol. II. Most pages with some degree of foxing.  Handsome on shelf, solid in hand.  (12431)

Provenance:  A bookplate engraved by Bird for the Institute of 1770, a social club at Harvard University, covers a previous bookplate on the front pastedown of each volume, along with a red and white shelving label that covers a small blue label.

•  Shoemaker 17119; Smith, American Travellers Abroad, W112.   Brown publisher's cloth, neatly rebacked and with gilt-stamped brown leather spine labels; rubbed and stained. Moderate to heavy foxing and staining; a few leaves creased across corners or with very short marginal tears, two leaves with chipped edges from paper manufacture. Provenance and readership indicia as above. Fun reading and snatches of fun commentary; clearly, fun was had by at least one previous reader!  (38688)