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Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
(AMERICAN REVOLUTION--PRELUDE.) The Town and Country Magazine . . . for the Year 1774, featuring the Boston Tea Party. 21 (of 25) engraved plates per the plate list, plus engraved frontispiece and collective title page, plus full-page "America in Flames" woodcut and other text illustrations. 717, [11] pages including supplement and index. 8vo, contemporary 1/2 calf over marbled boards, minor wear; minimal foxing, a few early manuscript notes; contemporary bookplate on front pastedown. London, January-December 1774
The 16 December 1773 Boston Tea Party is discussed at length in the January issue, in a 20 December report from Boston on pages 54-55. "But behold, what followed! A number of resolute men, dressed like Mohawks, or Indians, determined to do all in their power to save their country from the ruin which their enemies had plotted, in less than four hours emptied every chest of tea on board the three ships." Similar though less dramatic actions in Lexington, Philadelphia, and New York are also reported.
Later issues contain frequent discussion of boycotts, the Committees of Correspondence, and other pre-Revolutionary unrest. The first meeting of the Continental Congress is discussed at length in December on pages 671-672.
The volume also features a political cartoon satirizing the Intolerable Acts on page 658 of the December issue. Captioned simply "America in Flames," it depicts America as a woman being burned on a pyre, with a pot of tea spilled at her feet. Lords Bute, Mansfield, and North fan the flames with the bellows of the Quebec Bill and Boston Port Bill. The bellows titled "Masachusets Bay" may refer to the Massachusetts Government Act. This cartoon appears in some institutional collections, but we have not traced it at auction since a run of the magazine appeared in 1982. Dolmetsch, Rebellion and Reconciliation 30.
