SHAW, Lemuel

A Discourse, Delivered Before the Officers and Members of the Humane Society of Massachusetts, 11. June, 1811

Boston: John Eliot, Jun. 1811. First Edition. First printing. Octavo in fours (22.5cm). Stab-sewn pamphlet rebound in printer's waste; 24pp. Contemporary ownership inscription of Tho. Jamison [?] dated 1813. Gently rubbed, lacking front cover, else clean and sound: Very Good.

Bound in a portion of an unrecorded broadside listing "Qualified Voter[s]" in Boston's Ward no. 6 for an 1822 election. (Though the front wrapper is missing, offsetting to the title page reveals the date and ward number.) Boston incorporated itself as a city and reorganized its municipal government in early 1822, with a new city charter written by Lemuel Shaw (author of this pamphlet, later Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and father-in-law to Herman Melville). The broadside appears to have been a list of eligible voters for an 1822 election, possibly the spring election for the first mayor of Boston. Unused sewing holes and the impression of thread between them help illuminate why an 1822 broadside appears with an 1811 text: the pamphlet was originally bound differently, and seems to have been rebound with this later wrapper. We have been unable to locate this broadside in any bibliography or auction records. On Boston's incorporation, see Andrew R. L. Clayton, "The Fragmentation of 'A Great Family': The Panic of 1819 and the Rise of the Middling Interest in Boston, 1818-1822," Journal of the Early Republic 2.2. AMERICAN IMPRINTS 23927. SABIN 79943.

Price: $350.00

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