signed first edition
1795 · New York
by Wright, Paul.
Folio. New York: Birdsall and Menut, 1795. Folio, 420 pp., 28 plates, lacking final four leaves [list of subscribers?], one plate, and the folding map. Period-style sprinkled calf, backstrip with gilt-ruled raised bands and red gilt-stamped label. Frontis. and title-page remounted, pages moderately foxed and stained throughout, several plates with closed tears, old repairs and occasional loss. § First American edition, published the same year in Philadelphia. Evans 29928. "First published in thirty numbers, of sixteen pages and an engraving, each. The completed volume bearing the date of the first number, although publication was not completed until 1796 or 1797. The Philadelphia edition differs from the New York edition only in its title page." Evans 29927 [Philadelphia edition]. The engravings are from several sources and are signed by Tanner (frontis.), Rollinson, Tisdale, Scoles, and Anderson, among others. The London first edition (1790?), which boasts an even more loquacious title page, acknowledges Paul Wright D.D.(1738-1785) as "Vicar of Oakley, &c. in Essex, late of Pembroke-Hall, Cambridge; And Author of the Christian's New and Complete British Family Bible; of the New and Complete Edition of Fox's Original Book of Martyrs; And of The New Edition of the Whole Book of Common Prayer, with Notes". Remarkably, no further biography of this industrious divine can be found in any of the usual places but for the bare details of his career in the Clergy of the Church of England Database. (Inventory #: 123346)
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