Item #820 Catalogue of the American Portion of the Library. . .With a Memoir, and List of his Publications. By Wm. H. Whitmore. Thomas Prince.
“Of Special Value to all Interested in the Bibliography of New England”

Catalogue of the American Portion of the Library. . .With a Memoir, and List of his Publications. By Wm. H. Whitmore.

Boston: J. K. Wiggin & Wm. Parsons Lunt, 1868. Item #820

8vo.  205 x 120 mm., [8 ¼ x 4 ¾ inches].  xxv, 166 pp.  Contemporary morocco spine and tips over cloth boards; spine very rubbed, front high broken.  Bookplate of Isaac John Greenwood.


First edition.  Full title listing of over 1500 books forming the New England Library of Thomas Prince, historian of British North America and pastor of Old South Church in Boston.  “When Prince died in 1758 he left the New England Library to the South Church, to be housed in a chamber in the steeple.  The collection certainly suffered some loss during the British occupation of Boston in the winter of 1775-76, and the books not originally from Prince’s library were added in subsequent moves.  It was not until 1866 that the library was placed under the care of the Boston Public Library, and a definitive catalogue was prepared of what was then extent listing 1,528 books in the American section.  The better part of these were American imprints predating Prince’s death.”


William Reese. “The First One Hundred Years of Printing in British North America:  Printers and Collectors”.   An address delivered to the Annual Meeting of the American Antiquarian Society, October 18, 1989.

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Price: $375.00

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