“THE MOST IMPORTANT POLITICAL WRITING OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD”: SCARCE 1769 EDITION OF DICKINSON’S LETTERS FROM A FARMER

(AMERICAN REVOLUTION) [DICKINSON, John]. Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies. Philadelphia: Printed by William and Thomas Bradford, 1769. Octavo, modern half calf gilt, marbled boards, uncut; pp. [2], 104.

Third Philadelphia edition of Dickinson’s seminal revolutionary work, published only one year after the virtually unobtainable first edition, and the first to be published by renowned Philadelphia printers William and Thomas Bradford, a work famed for Dickinson’s powerful opposition to the incendiary Stamp Act—hailed as the “earliest serious study into colonial legal rights” (Howes).

Philadelphia patriot John Dickinson, a leading member of the Continental Congress, authored several of the most important political writings of the Revolution, especially his influential Letters, whose carefully reasoned arguments “helped to repeal the Stamp Act” (Langguth, 175). For this key work, in which Dickinson described the Stamp Act as “pernicious to freedom,” examining “Parliament’s power with greater acuity than any writer had shown before” (Bailyn, 215), and his later Causes of Taking Up Arms (1775), “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). Third Philadelphia edition, published one year after the virtually unobtainable March 1768 Philadelphia edition. Dickinson’s “twelve letters appeared first in the Pennsylvania Chronicle between November 30, 1767 and February 8, 1768” (Adams 54a). Adams, American Independence 54h. Evans 11238. Sabin 20044. Howes D329. Bookplate.

Text generally fresh with minor soiling, scattered foxing, title page with small margin loss (1/4-inch) minutely affecting one letter in first word of title and three pinholes not affecting text, second leaf with small corner loss (3/4-inch) affecting headpiece and one letter on verso, third leaf with tiny bit of corner loss not affecting text. A very good copy.