Books and Manuscripts

Worcester: Isaiah Thomas, 1810. In two volumes. First edition. 8vo. 487; 576 pp. Illustrated with five engraved plates (four folding). Contemporary sheep, red morocco spine labels, stamped in gilt, extremities and spines worn; gift inscription of Thomas's grandson, Benjamin Franklin Thomas (1813-78), on each front free endpaper, as well as his signature on title-page in first volume; front free endpaper of second volume starting; scattered foxing to text; quarter morocco slip case and chemises. Grolier American 29; Howes T 168; Sabin 95495; Streeter 7:4176.

Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831) was born in Boston and apprenticed to printer Zechariah Fowle, with whom he formed a partnership in 1770. They published the Massachusetts Spy, but after three months, Thomas continued the publication alone. The royal governor ordered the attorney general to prosecute Thomas for his Whig views, but the grand jury refused to indict him. In 1774, Thomas published the Royal American Magazine for a short time. Three days before the Battle of Concord, in which he participated, Thomas moved his presses from Boston to Worcester. Thomas continued publication of the Massachusetts Spy there until 1802, with gaps from 1776 to 1778 and from 1786 to 1788; published and sold books; and built a paper mill and bindery. In 1802, he transferred the business to his son. From 1775 to 1803, Thomas published the New England Almanac, which his son continued until 1819. In 1786, he was the first printer in the United States to use music type, and in 1791, he printed a folio edition of the Bible and of Isaac Watts’ Psalms and Hymns. He began a project on the history of printing in 1808, and he published it in two volumes in 1810. His grandson published a second edition in 1874. In 1812, Thomas founded what became the American Antiquarian Society, and he donated 8,000 volumes from his collection and one of the most valuable files of newspapers in the country to the Society. On his death, he bequeathed his entire library and collection of early American newspapers to the American Antiquarian Society.

Signed by Thomas’s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Thomas (1813-1878) who was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts and an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.