“THE GREAT AND IMPORTANT MESSAGE NOW REVEALED FROM HEAVEN”: FIRST EDITION OF ORSON PRATT’S IMPORTANT SERIES OF PAMPHLETS, 1851, WITH TWO PORTRAITS AND FOLDING FACSIMILE OF THE “KINDERHOOK PLATES”

PRATT, Orson. A Series of Pamphlets. Liverpool: Franklin D. Richards, 1851. Octavo, period style three quarter calf gilt, marbled boards.

First edition of Orson Pratt’s “extremely influential” collected works—pamphlets written to support the Latter-day Saints’ earliest missionary efforts in Great Britain—illustrated with two frontispiece portraits and the original folding facsimile of the Kinderhook Plates.

The first pioneer to enter the Salt Lake Valley, Pratt assumed the presidency of the Latter-day Saints’ British Mission in August 1848. “Enjoined by Brigham Young to ‘print, publish and superintend the emigration,’ he wrote 16 tracts during the next 2-1/2 years which were published and republished by the tens of thousands and formed the basis of the missionary efforts… Early in 1851 these tracts, together with the two debates mentioned in the title, were bound together with a title page, table of contents and frontispiece to form a book which eventually became known as Orson Pratt’s Works… Pratt’s Works was an extremely influential book. Its tracts were published at a time when the British Mission was producing its most converts, many of whom learned the tenets of Mormonism from Orson’s pamphlets. With the onset of the Utah War in 1857, Mormon book writing almost totally ceased, and for the next 20 years virtually no new books were printed. What this meant was that those books which were in print before the Utah War continued to exert their influence for another generation, especially Orson Pratt’s Works, which simply outnumbered all others by many thousands” (Brigham Young University). “Pratt was a positive and constructive influence on the religious and scientific education of the Mormon pioneers of the 19th century. His countless sermons, numerous pamphlets and several books provided the agrarian communities of the Great Basin with an unusual cultural and intellectual dimension. From his earliest years as a church leader, his arguments were always characterized by precision and a logical rigor… [Pratt was] a careful and insightful innovator, elaborator, systematizer and popularizer of Latter-day Saint ideas and beliefs, eventually framing the totality of his ideas into a cosmic theology” (ANB). “Originally published as separate pamphlets. A title page, table of contents and a portrait of Orson Pratt were published, and the work was bound in an official press binding of 3/4 embossed leather, stamped ‘O. Pratt’s works, &c.’. This binding has been re-created in facsimile. The title page, table of contents and portrait were apparently also sold for individual binding. These bindings have other portraits and variant tracts” (Flake & Draper 6542). This copy with title page imprint reading “Published by Franklin D. Richards,” as in Graff; this precise imprint not recorded in Flaker & Drape, who do record imprints of “Published by Franklin D. Richards, Printed by R. James” and “Printed by R. James.” With folding facsimile of “The Brass Plates Recently Taken from a Mound in the Vicinity of Kinderhook, Pike County, Illinois.” These “Kinderhook Plates,” as they came to be known, were purported to contain, in ancient hieroglyphics, “the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt…” The plates have long been established as a contemporary, fraudulent effort to trick Joseph Smith. With two frontispiece portraits; Graff records three, but other copies have one or two.

Scattered light foxing, occasional mild marginal dampstaining (including to frontispiece and title page). Expertly repaired closed tear to frontispiece. Expert repair to folding facsimile with some loss to text and images. A very good copy of a scarce and significant volume in Latter-day Saint history.