Sketches in Verse.

Philadelphia: printed for C. & A. Conrad by Smith & Maxwell, 1810.

Price: $750.00


About the item

First edition. Engraved endpiece. [iii-]viii, [9-]184 pp. Original boards, neatly rebacked to style using early cloth, paper label. Some soiling, pp. 75-6 with repair to void in outer blank margin, with no loss to text, some light surface soiling and occasional spotting or toning. Provenance: Konik (indistinct signature); Congressman Charles Miner with his signature on upper cover, inscription on title dated 1822; E. Worthington Conard (Westchester, Pa., inscription). Shaw & Shoemker 21241 (9 copies): OCLC 504231552 (1 copy) & 771695841 (1 copy); Sabin 67377 (without engraved plates); Wegelin 1120.

Item #267139

First edition of a scarce work, edited by “the father of American Belles-Lettres” (T. Dwight). This is an early issue: a later issue seems to have been published in about 1819, which included an engraved additional title and two plates.
More correctly, this work marks the first appearance in book form of many of the pieces, for as Joseph Dennie notes in the ‘Preface’, “most of the following ‘Sketches’ have already appeared in The Port Folio”: which was arguably the first important political and literary journal in the United States which Dennie edited.
Dennie “was an American author and journalist who was one of the foremost men of letters of the Federalist Era.” A Federalist, Dennie is best remembered for his series of essays entitled The Lay Preacher and as the founding editor of the afore-mentioned Port Folio, a journal with classical republican values. Port Folio was the most highly regarded and successful literary publication of its time, and the first important political and literary journal in the United States. Timothy Dwight IV referred to Dennie as "the Addison of America" and "the father of American Belles-Lettres."
Rose (1776-1842) is an interesting figure. He was the proprietor and first major developer of Silver Lake Township, Pa. (he owned 140,000 acres at one point); he is also credited for much of the development of Susquehanna County, Pa., and was active in attempts to help Irish immigrant families and as an abolitionist.