[Rarebooks] fa: 1790 NEW-YORK MAGAZINE or LITERARY REPOSITORY: Copper Engraving of FEDERAL HALL

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, October 26. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/m9n3x9o

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


The New-York Magazine; or, Literary Repository: For March, 1790. Number III. Volume I.  New York: Printed by T. and J. Swords, at their Printing Office, 1790. First edition. Slim 8vo (20 cm) in later crimson morocco and marbled boards, spine tooled in gilt; [4], 133-192 p. (64 pp. total); with a copper-engraved plate.

A handsome and scarce example of this early American periodical whose subscribers included George Washington, John Adams, Chief Justice John Jay and New York Mayor Richard Varick. Published from January 1790 to December 1797, and eventually numbering close to 100 issues, the New-York Magazine was the longest-running American periodical of the era and has been described as one of "the most important post-Revolution magazines" (F.L. Mott, A History of American Magazines 1741-1850,) and "the best magazine published in this city before 1800… well edited, and rendered additionally interesting by the copper-plate engravings in each number…now exceedingly scarce" ("Early American Magazines" in Printers' Ink, vol. xix, no. 10).

In this, the magazine's third issue, the contents include:
	- A Description of the FEDERAL EDIFICE in the City of New-York, Ornamented with a Copper-Plate Engraving. (New York was still the capital of the United States when this issue was published and it was in Federal Hall where the first Congress sat, passing the Bill of Rights, etc. George Washington had been inaugurated on its balcony less than a year before.)
	- CONGRESSIONAL AFFAIRS: including proceedings of the House of Representatives, reports from Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary for the War Department Henry Knox, a message from President G. Washington, etc.
	- FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE: letters and reports from Paris ("The Marquis de la Fayette received information of a new conspiracy being formed against the liberties of the people…"); Madrid ("The Defence of the Genius of Women, an academic discourse by Nonna Giuseppa Amar and Bordon… is a fatal blow to the affected and arrogant pre-eminence of the male sex…"); New York ("On Thursday last, the new Church, lately built on Broadway, on the site of the old Trinity Church, was solemnly consecrated…"); etc.
	- "THE AMERICAN MUSE." Original verses submitted by readers, including: "Poetry by Mrs. —— written after she had fled from her house in the retreat from Burgoyne"; "On a great Coxcomb recovering from an Indisposition"; "The Belles of New-York"; etc.
	- EXTRACTS from: An Account of the Pelew Islands; The right Constitution of a Commonwealth examined, from Dr. Adams's (Vice-President of the United States) Defence of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America; Zeluco, a Novel of much merit, lately published; etc.
	- A Love Adventure in India.
	- Meteorological Observations, Marriages, Deaths, and much more…
Contents evenly toned; one leaf with an old professional paper repair to the margin affecting a few letters of the text, small ink stain to one leaf; otherwise clean and sound, complete and firmly bound in a handsome half-morocco binding with just a touch of darkening to the spine and edges.