“THE MOST IMPORTANT POLITICAL WRITING OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD”: DICKINSON’S LETTERS FROM A FARMER, 1768, THE FIRST EDITION TO CONTAIN “TO THE INGENIOUS AUTHOR”

(AMERICAN REVOLUTION) DICKINSON, John. Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies. Boston: Mein and Fleming, 1768. Octavo, early 20th-century three-quarter brown calf, marbled boards and endpapers.

Second American edition of Dickinson’s seminal revolutionary work that helped unite the American colonists against the 1767 Townshend Acts, a group of laws passed by Parliament after the repeal of the Stamp Act to levy new taxes and force compliance with trade regulations. This scarce first Boston edition, published within weeks of the virtually unobtainable Philadelphia edition, is also the first to include the letter “To the ingenious Author.”

Philadelphia patriot John Dickinson, a leading member of the Continental Congress, authored several of the most important political writings of the Revolution, most notably his influential Letters which examined "Parliament's power with greater acuity than any writer had shown before" (Bailyn, 215), and his passionate Declaration… [on] the Causes of Taking Up Arms (1775), which was co-written with Thomas Jefferson and is one of the most important precursors to the Declaration of Independence. "Dickinson is known as the 'Penman of the Revolution… Until 1776, his writings had made him better known by his fellow countrymen than any American except Franklin. His biographer writes: 'By 1733 John Dickinson was recognized as the leading champion of American liberty throughout the colonies… [The Letters are] the most important political writing of the revolutionary period… No political work was as widely read or as enthusiastically received in the American colonies until Thomas Paine's Common Sense… The Farmer's Letters are a critical source to understand if one seeks to comprehend the political thought of the American Revolution" (Webking, American Revolution, 41-3). "These letters when published (anonymously) created a sensation… 'excepting the political essays of Thomas Paine, which did not begin to appear until nine years later, none equaled the Farmer's Letters in immediate celebrity and in direct power upon events" (Grolier, American 100:13). Published one month after the virtually unobtainable March 1768 Philadelphia edition, this first Boston edition of that April is notably the first to include the additional letter "To the ingenious Author of certain patriotic Letters," which was "ordered to be printed by the town of Boston" (Adams 54c). Second state, with seven lines of text on page 55 and letter on T2. Dickinson's "twelve letters appeared first in the Pennsylvania Chronicle between November 30, 1767 and February 8, 1768" (Adams 54a). Without rarely found half title. ESTC W31739. Evans 10876. Howes D329. Sabin 20044.

Text fine; only light rubbing to boards, tiny bit of loss to spine head. A rare near-fine copy of this most important and desirable Revolutionary work.