“ZION’S POETESS”

SNOW, Eliza R. Poems, Religious, Historical and Political. Vol. I. Liverpool and London: F.D. Richards and Latter-Day Saints' Book Depot, 1856. WITH: Poems, Religious, Historical and Political. Also Two Articles in Prose. Vol. II. Salt Lake City: Printed at the Latter-Day Saints' Printing and Publishing Establishment, 1877. Together, two volumes. 12mo, original green and brown blind- and gilt-decorated cloth. $2200.

First editions of both volumes of Snow’s poetry, “words that have become permanently embedded in the Mormon culture,” in original cloth.

"Eliza R. Snow, 'Zion's Poetess,' was the most influential of all the 19th-century Mormon women. Born in Massachusetts in 1804, she lived her early life in Ohio and in 1835 followed her mother and sister into the Mormon Church. From Kirtland in 1838 she traveled with her family to Missouri, and then into Illinois. In Nauvoo she was the secretary of the first Relief Society, and in June 1842 she became a plural wife of Joseph Smith. Eliza made the overland crossing to Utah in 1847. When the Relief Society was organized throughout all the wards of the Church in the late 1860s, she was called to be the president, a position she held for 20 years… All during her life Eliza Snow wrote poems which she published in the Mormon newspapers and magazines in Ohio, Illinois and Utah… Most aspects of the history and ideology of the Latter-day Saints are touched in these works, in words that have become permanently embedded in the Mormon culture" (Crawley 105). Volume II with engraved frontispiece portrait of Snow. Flake 7843, 7844. Sabin 85505, 85506. Volume II with contemporary gift inscription.

Occasional light foxing, expert joint and corner repairs in Volume II. Cloth of both volumes with light spotting. A handsome pair of volumes.