(CROMWELL LIBRARY) William Hilary Coston A Freeman and Yet a

Sale 2562 - Lot 187

Price Realized: $ 1,625

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Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

(CROMWELL LIBRARY.) William Hilary Coston. A Freeman, and Yet a Slave. Frontispiece plate. 84, [1] pages. 16mo, publisher's gilt cloth, minor wear; hinges split, short closed tear to frontispiece, otherwise minimal wear to contents, pencil editing marks in margins. Burlington, IA: Wohlwend Bros., 1888?

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Additional Details

First edition. A bracing political tract by a Yale-educated African Methodist Episcopal minister, born in Providence, RI. White Christian hypocrisy, capitalism, and open immigration are dismantled in turn. This copy bears no ownership marks, but the pencil marginal notes are likely John Wesley Cromwell's--possibly intended as suggested corrections for a later edition. Coston was a minister in Mount Pleasant, Iowa from 1888 to 1889, when this book was published. None others traced at auction. Work, page 88; not in Afro-Americana or Blockson.

Provenance: family of author and activist John Wesley Cromwell (1846-1927) through his daughter Otelia Cromwell (1874-1972), a noted literary scholar; granddaughter Adelaide M. Cromwell (1919-2019), an important sociologist.