ABOLITIONIST GEORGE BOURNE'S FIRST BOOK

[BOURNE, George, editor]. The Spirit of the Public Journals; or, Beauties of the American Newspapers, for 1805. Baltimore: Geo. Dobbin & Murphy, 1806. 12mo, original half plum muslin, blue boards, printed paper spine label. $450.

First edition of this anthology of newspaper articles and poems, the first book edited and published by the anti-slavery crusader George Bourne, scarce in the original binding.

"Bourne was a crucial figure in the history of the antislavery movement… One of the first radical abolitionists… he was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833) and a regular contributor to Garrison's famous paper The Liberator… He first visited the United States in 1802 and in 1804 emigrated to Baltimore, Maryland. Rather than enter the ministry, Bourne became a journalist and established the Baltimore Evening Post in March 1805… His first book, The Spirit of Public Journals (1806), likely impressed several influential publishers, such as Niles and Mathew Carey, who commissioned Bourne to write a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte (1806), which he followed in 1807 with a study of the Methodist leader John Wesley" (ANB). He later moved moved to Virginia and became a Presbyterian pastor. He is best known for his 1816 work, The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable, in which he called for immediate emancipation without compensation, which led directly to his expulsion from the South. Sabin 6921a. Shaw & Shoemaker 11020.

Interior clean. Light wear to extremities, most notably to head of lightly toned spine. Extremely good in the original binding.