HISTORY OF THE RISE, PROGRESS AND TERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Boston: Manning and Loring for E. Larkin, 1805. Very good plus.. First edition of this landmark history of the Revolutionary War, by the most prominent woman historian of the fledgling United States. As a playwright, poet, political agitator, prolific letter-writer, and Jeffersonian anti-federalist, Mercy Otis Warren was deeply ensconced in the political and literary circles of pre- and post-Revolutionary Boston, lauded by several future Founders for her polemical and satirical talents and a firsthand observer of many of the people and events she would go on to chronicle and criticize. At one time Warren counted Abigail Adams and John Adams among her friends; her relationship with both would grow increasingly less friendly due to political differences, culminating in John Adams's private declaration, after reading this book, that history was "not the Province of the Ladies." Adams had once admired her "masterly pen," but hell hath no fury like the man who searches a book for references to himself and is not pleased by what he finds. Jefferson, on the other hand, ordered "subscriptions of Warren's History for himself and his cabinet" (Library of Congress). An exceptional copy, rare intact in a contemporary binding. Three octavo volumes in fours, 8.25'' x 5.25'' each. Contemporary full brown sheep, black morocco spine labels, raised bands. Yellow stained edges. xii, 447, [1]; vii, [1], 412; vi, 475 pages. Bindings worn and rubbed, with small expert reinforcement to spine heads; some chipping to spine ends. Interior intermittently toned as usual (due to improper sizing of paper at time of production), some foxing. Firm and handsome.