(John Armstrong) | An exceedingly rare Franklin imprint

[John Armstrong]

The Art of Preserving Health: A Poem. London, Printed: Philadelphia: Re-printed, and Sold by B. Franklin, M.DCC.XLV (1745)

4to (192 x 124 mm). Complete with all four section-titles, woodcut title-page ornament and tailpieces (Miller, appendix B, 19 and 21); dampstaining, early ownership marking on title page. Period-style full calf, blind-ruled, maroon morocco spine label. Dark blue slipcase, chemise.

An exceedingly rare Franklin imprint: the first American edition of physician-poet John Armstrong's poem on health and well-being.

John Armstrong (1709–1779), aScottish-born poet and physician, blended his two professions when he penned this long didactic poem in blank verse. It is divided into four books, each pertaining to a different pillar of good health: air, diet, exercise, and the passions. Despite having "a somewhat unpromising subject for poetic treatment [it] is gracefully and ingeniously handled" (John W. Cousin, A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, London: J.M. Dent, 1910).

The poem was very successful when first published in London by Andrew Millar in 1744, and it afforded its author a degree of contemporary fame. Armstrong published both prose and verse regularly after 1744, and was an active member in London's literary circles. He corresponded extensively with Tobias Smollett, James Thomson, John Wilkes, and others. He also practiced as a physician and published several medical works. It is a testament to The Art of Preserving Health's widespread success that Benjamin Franklin, across the Atlantic in Philadelphia, decided to reprint the poem so soon after it first appeared in London.

Rare—ESTC lists only twelve copies in institutions; the last copy that sold at auction was in 1941 at Parke Bernet, and prior to that, copies appeared at Henkels in 1932, 1921, and 1917; Rosenbach offered a copy in 1917; the great Franklin collector Samuel Pennypacker never owned a copy.

REFERENCES

Miller 367; ESTC W872; Evans 5532; Hildeburn 913; Sabin 2023; R. B. Austin, Early American Medical Imprints 78;Lewis M. Knapp, "Dr. John Armstrong, Littérateur, and Associate of Smollett, Thomson, Wilkes, and Other Celebrities," in PMLA, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Dec., 1944), pp. 1019–1058

PROVENANCE

Largely illegible early ownership signature on the title-page, possibly beginning with "A" and "G"