Books and Manuscripts

(Dickinson, John)
Letters from a Farmer, in Pennsylvania, To the Inhabitants of the British Colonies
Philadelphia Printed; and London Re-printed for J. Almon, 1774. Second English edition. 8vo. (ii), (5)-136 pp.; lacking half-title. Modern three-quarter marbled calf over marbled paper-covered boards, stamped in blind and in gilt; all edges trimmed; title-page supplied from another copy; text likely washed; light spotting in fore-edge of most text leaves. Sabin 20044; Howes D-329; Adams, American Independence 54j, and American Controversy 68-7d; ESTC T56443

Scarce second English edition of John Dickinson's famed letters penned in response to Parliament's passage of the Townshend Acts, considered the "earliest serious study into colonial legal rights." (Howes) The first edition was published in Boston in 1768 and was quickly reprinted throughout the colonies, with the first English edition appearing later that same year, also by Almon. This second English edition, published in November, 1774, was following the appearance of Dickinson's pamphlet below, "A New Essay [By the Pennsylvania Farmer] on the Constitutional Power of Great Britain." Both published on the heels of the meeting of the First Continental Congress.

Together with:

(Dickinson, John)
A New Essay [By the Pennsylvania Farmer] on the Constitutional Power of Great-Britain Over the Colonies in America...
Philadelphia Printed; and London Re-printed for J. Almon, 1774. First English edition. 8vo. (iii)-viii, 126 pp.; lacking half-title and ad leaf. Modern quarter brown calf over marbled paper-covered boards, red calf spine label, stamped in blind and in gilt; all edges trimmed. Sabin 20046; Howes D-326; Adams, American Independence 110b, and American Controversy 74-28b; ESTC T39834; Heartman 136

Scarce first English edition of Dickinson's powerful legal and philosophical essay on colonial rights. First published in Philadelphia in August, 1774, under the title "An Essay on the Constitutional Power of Great-Britain...", it was composed to accompany the instructions given to the Pennsylvania delegation to the First Continental Congress.