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Recent Acquisition
Unique Boston Imprint Returns to Massachusetts
Doolittle, Thomas, 1632?-1707. A prospect of eternity. Wherein is clearly proved, I. That there is an eternity into which all men must enter... Boston: John Allen, for Eleazer Phillips, 1709.
The only known copy, previously unrecorded, of this work by a prominent
English Non-Conformist minister. Unpublished during Doolittle's
lifetime, it was first printed in Boston in 1709, in two editions and a
total of four issues. Each survives in a unique copy, all of them now at
AAS. (A final edition appeared at Boston in 1715, of which AAS owns one
of the two known copies.)
This copy, which recently surfaced in England, is in its original Boston binding of blind-ruled sheep over wooden boards, with printed pastedowns recycled from a religious work published in London in 1672. It bears several early ownership signatures of members of the Kingsbery family.
Puchased from David Harrison. Harry G. Stoddard Memorial Fund.
--David Whitesell, Curator of Books
"One day I am visited by a collector of ordination sermons; the next, by
a collector of 4th of July orations; then comes a collector of geography;
another wants religious newspapers; another wants every book printed in
New York before 1700. I accommodate myself to all; for I want every thing
and collect every thing, and I have more zeal than the whole of them: and
in this way I am kept very busy."
~Christopher Columbus Baldwin
3rd Librarian of AAS
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