Mather, Cotton | Ecclesiastes. The Life of the Reverend & Excellent, Jonathan Mitchel

Mather, Cotton

Ecclesiastes. The Life of the Reverend & Excellent, Jonathan Mitchel; A Pastor of the Church, and A Glory of the Colledge, in Cambridge, New-England. Massachuset: Printed by B. Green, and J. Allen. Sold at the Booksellers Shops in Boston, 1697

8vo (150 x 92 mm). Title within woodcut border, woodcut headpieces; browned and foxed throughout, a few old creases, closed tear to A2 affecting text but not costing letters, small abrasion to B7 costing one word, some dampstaining. Contemporary sheep over boards, double-filleted in blind, smooth spine with false compartments ruled in blind, edges sprinkled red; lightly rubbed at extremities, loss to lower spine.

First edition, first issue of this rare work on the colonial reverend.

Cotton Mather, the prolific Puritan minister of colonial New England, wrote the present biography of fellow minister Jonathan Mitchel nearly thirty years after Mitchel's death in 1668. Two states of the present (and only) edition are recorded, with and without five lines of errata on the final advertisement leaf—this copy without, indicating the first issue.

The present copy bears the ownership inscription of Shepard Fiske, possibly of the same Fiske family that had been active in colonial religious life since their arrival in Cambridge in 1637.

Rare—Rare Book Hub records only three copies at auction in the last fifty years.

REFERENCES

Evans 790; Pierce, Fiske and Fisk Family; Sabin 46297

PROVENANCE

"Shepardus Fisk" (inscriptions to front free endpaper and preliminary leaf)