Leisure Hours; Or Poems, Moral, Religious, & Descriptive.

Marsden, Joshua, Missionary

Verlag: New York, Griffin and Rudd, 1812.

Beschreibung

First edition. Woodcut frontispiece portrait of the author and two additional plates within, one of which is entitled The Death of Voltaire; plates are credited to Paul & Thomas, actually New York printers, not an individual artist. Binding in so-so condition, aged, front cover hanging by a thread, spine poor but present except for a half-inch loss at bottom. Marsden (1777-1837) was born in Warrington, Cheshire, England and died in London. The following is based on an account in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography; a psychological profile of Marsden and his conversion experience can be found in E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. After attempting a life at sea, he felt the call and became a Wesleyan missionary, his first posts of responsibility being in the Maritime provinces of British North America. In 1808 he went to missionize in Bermuda, from where the previous Methodist missionary had been expelled. "In the slavery-dominated Bermudian society he affirmed by example his belief that the blacks were human beings, supervised the building of a chapel in which integrated services were held, opened a Sunday school in which blacks learned to read, and managed to quell the opposition of the government and the white community. When he came to Bermuda he was considered "an imposter, an enthusiast, or something worse"; when he left in 1812, there were 136 members in the Methodist society." This pious biography may be taken with a grain of salt; Marsden's activities among the Black population of Bermuda were likely seen as unwelcome agitation by the governing and propertied classes. Nevertheless, the church Marsden founded still exists in Bermuda. He left the colony in 1812 and became stranded in New York by the War of 1812; this enforced sojourn resulted in the publication of this volume. Rare. WorldCat shows no physical copies. Original donation bookplate to the (New York) Mercantile Library Association, a nice piece of period engraving, with the inventory number 398. Aside from its historical and literary interest, the volume is an example of early American book illustration. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 5019

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Leisure Hours; Or Poems, Moral, Religious, &...

Verlag: New York, Griffin and Rudd, 1812.

Auflage: 1. Auflage