[Rarebooks] fa: REMARKABLE ACCOUNT of the VISION OF NATHAN CULVER - Leominster (Mass.): 1802

[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 again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


[Nathan Culver:] A Very Remarkable Account of the Vision of Nathan Culver, late of Newton, (New-York). Shewing, His Deistical and vicious Principles, and how he was converted to the Truth, by an extraordinary and immediate Revelation, Jun. 10, 1791. Leominster, (Mass.): Printed by Salmon Wilder, May 1802. Small 8vo (18 cm) in nineteenth-century half morocco with gilt titles to the spine; iv, [5]-12 pp.; woodcut decorations.

Rare early printing of a work which is quite scarce in its own right. We find only one other example of this edition, in the Library of Congress; none in OCLC, which, discounting digital versions, locates only one copy of any edition whatsoever, that of 1793 (with an Exeter, N.H., imprint) at the New York Historical Society. The printer of the our edition, Salmon Wilder (1778-1832), was a partner of Dr. Daniel Adams, with whom he published a short-lived magazine, The Telescope: or, American Herald from 1800 to 1802. Salmon also printed Adams's popular textbook The Scholar's Arithmetic (1802) and other scholarly and religious works before quitting Leominster for New Ipswich in about 1815. "Nathan Culver doubted the existence of heaven and hell, until one night he had a dream in which Christ gave him a tour of heaven and a horrifying glimpse of the Devil tormenting souls; and so his life was changed. In early America many books of prophecy were published, and many sermons in which God’s plan was revealed, almost all written by ordained clergymen. Nathan Culver was an obscure man whose personal revelation was reprinted at least six times…" ("From the Bottom Up. Section IX: The Devils." Library Company of Philadelphia, 2004).

Binding rubbed at the joints and extremities; title-page with loss to the lower corner (not affecting any text); light browning and scattered spots and stains throughout.