Books and Manuscripts

The First Official Printing of the Stamp Act

London: Printed by Mark Baskett, 1765. First official folio edition. 17 leaves: (ii), 279-310pp. Disbound; first two leaves loose; sheets lightly toned; scattered minor spotting; small creasing in top and bottom corners; in full black morocco solander box and chemise. Sweet & Maxwell II:176; Howes A-285; Church 1054; Sabin 1606; Stevens 6; Reese, The Revolutionary Hundred 4, and Celebration of My Country 40

The very rare first official printing of the Stamp Act, the "crystallizing moment of colonial opposition." (The Revolutionary Hundred)

The passage of the Stamp Act was one of the signal events in the history of the United States. After its successful effort in the French and Indian War, the British government was saddled with a massive debt. Added to this was the cost of administering its vast new lands in North America won from the French, as well as the necessity of protecting colonists on the American frontier from Native American attacks. In order to raise funds for border defenses, the British Parliament decided to levy a tax directly on the colonists, rather than relying on colonial legislatures to raise the funds themselves. Over the protests of colonial agents in London, including Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania and Jared Ingersoll of Connecticut, a tax was levied on all legal and commercial papers, pamphlets, newspapers, almanacs, cards, and dice (nine pages in the present act are taken up with descriptions of what type of printed materials would be subject to the tax).

In Britain, a Stamp Office was created and Stamp Inspectors were assigned to be dispatched to each colonial district. Colonists wishing to purchase or use any of the materials covered in the Act would be required to buy a stamp. The outrage in the colonies at this form of taxation was immediate and overwhelming, and the Stamp Act was quickly repealed in 1766. The bitterness engendered by the Act lingered on, and, coupled with subsequent British laws including the Intolerable Acts and the Townshend Acts, became some of the many grievances enunciated in the Declaration of Independence.

"This is the original folio edition of the famous (or infamous) Stamp Act, by which the American colonies were taxed in and on their business papers" (Church). "The importance of this act to our history needs no comment" (Streeter). Sabin and Howes note an octavo edition of sixty-six pages, also printed by Baskett in London in 1765. This momentous law was reprinted several times in the American colonies in 1765, in editions in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Annapolis, New London, and Woodbridge, New Jersey.

A handsome and rare example, fresh to market.