[Rarebooks] fa: Athenian Mercury 1692: On JAMES II & WILLIAM OF ORANGE, JACOBITE HEADWEAR etc.

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other titles related to the English Civil War, the Stuart kings, and Jacobites, auctions ending MONDAY, October 21. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/lylcx3a

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

The Athenian Mercury. Vol. 7, Numb. 14. [AND} Vol. 8, Numb. 21. London: Printed for John Dunton at the Raven in the Poultrey, 1692. Two sheets, folio (32.5 x 19.5 cm.; 12 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.), printed on both sides. Modest wear and light creases, browning to the edges, spotting/foxing to the second sheet.

Two separate issues of this popular late seventeenth-century English periodical, the first newspaper to use the question-and-answer format, both issues with material related to the deposed Stuarts and their adherents. In the first issue, one reader poses the ironic question: "If the Dutch, our Friends, had so considerable a sum for their Charge in bringing over the Prince of Orange, what may we expect the French King, our enemy, will demand if he should settle King James on the throne of England again, considering the maintaining him and the War upon his  Account these 3 or 4 years past…?" The editors answer, in part, that the French King "is not so senseless as the Jacobites, to think of re-introducing the late King James," though he may make some spurious show of assisting James, and even grant him a small invasion force just to be rid of him. A second reader wonders about a "strange Fancy" he's been told of, "which upon observation I find true; that is, that The Jacobites have agreed, for a distinguishing Mark to wear their Hats dented in on the side of the Crown…" In the second issue, when a reader inquires (in verse) whether the absence of King William's name from recent issues of the Athenian means that "You're in good earnest now turn'd Jacobites?" the editors respond (in verse) with a proclamation of their loyalty ("Great William's Name in our hoarse Notes we'll sing, / And may each ill-lookt Traytor mounted, swing;…")

The best-known and longest-lived of all seventeenth-century literary periodicals, The Athenian Mercury was the first advice column and the first newspaper to use the question-and-answer format. A widely-read staple of the coffee houses, it is also generally considered the first major popular periodical in England as well as the first miscellaneous periodical, and the first to appeal to both men and women. Published twice weekly from 1691-1697 by the eccentric pamphleteer and prolific publisher John Dunton, the Athenian Mercury took its name from Acts 17:21 ("For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing"). Over the course of its 580 numbers, Dunton and his two principal writers, Richard Sault and Samuel Wesley (father of Charles and John Wesley), answered nearly 6000 questions, both weighty and frivolous, on a dizzying array of topics, including theology, philosophy, politics, health, natural history, science, literature, courtship and marriage, sex, etiquette, etc., etc.