Beschreibung:

An Address to Protestants upon the Present Conjuncture.
N.p. [but London: Andrew Sowle]: 1679. [12]; 5-248 pp., small 4to (185 x 140 mm). Contemporary sheep over pastepaper boards, covers and spine ruled with a blind double fillet, probably by William Bradford of Philadelphia. Housed in a cloth chemise and slipcase. Condition: front and rear endpapers and blanks defective, browning and staining, early owner’s extensive annotations on verso of title visible recto, other early marginalia; well worn and cracked. Provenance: Samuel Miles, 1662?-1708 (inscription on verso of the front blank, “Samuel Miles his Book, / Bought of William Bradford / price 4:8 / 1690”); Thomas Thomas (1712 inscription on the front free endpaper). first edition. the earliest documented book sold by william bradford in philadelphia and probably among the earliest extant philadelphia bindings. Bradford was the only printer operating in the Middle Colonies during this formative period, and as per custom would have not only been a printer, but a bookseller and binder as well. While Sowle’s apprentice, Bradford worked upon the publication of this William Penn tract. Needing stock in his new Philadelphia venture, copies of this work and other Quaker tracts were brought to Philadelphia by Bradford presumably in the late 1680s. His first list of books for sale would appear at the end of a 1691 imprint from his press (Evans 580; Hildeburn 29), i.e. one year following the sale of this book to Samuel Miles. That list includes An Address to Protestants , in addition to William Penn’s No Cross, No Crown and other Quaker tracts. While the simple double fillet is too generic to positively attribute to Bradford, it is likely a binding by him. Indeed, each of the books he offered for sale in the 1691 advertisement that were not his own imprint were likely shipped from London unbound. Miles was among the earliest settlers of the Welsh Tract, living in Radnor Township in 1686. “They were in membership with Friends, but their names are not frequently connected with the business affairs of the Society” (Smith, History of Delaware County). Thomas Thomas the other early owner of this book was the eldest son of William Thomas (the nephew of one of the earliest settlers of Radnor by the same name) and was married to Tamar Miles, the daughter of Samuel Miles and the first child born in Radnor PA. Mid-Atlantic bindings from this period are virtually non-existent. The earliest Philadelphia binding in the Papantonio Collection is dated 1728 and the earliest in the Maser Collection dated 1730. The latter collection also includes a Bradford binding done in New York in 1722. Like the present volume, that binding is simple sheep with a blind-tooled filet (albeit with a central panel). Among the reasons for the rarity of such bindings must be due in part to the few numbers of books bought and sold in this period. “The earliest immigrants [to Pennsylvania] brought relatively few books with them; indeed in the midst of making new homes they had little time for collecting and reading books” (Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House). Examining the wills of the first generation of early Quaker settlers, Tolles concludes that “the average immigrant possessed a Bible, the works of two or three of the first Quaker ‘Publishers of Truth’ and a few other books.” This work would certainly have been included in such homes. It is a notable tract, summarized by Penn in the Preface as principally concerning “Vice, Presumption and Violence.” The work is present here as Bronner & Fraser’s second edition, first issue, first state, with the printed overslip on p. 152. Bronner & Fraser 48b; Sabin 59675; Wing P1248 (variant).