Nov 21 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2687 -
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Sale 2687 - Lot 123

Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(EARLY AMERICAN IMPRINT--1699.) [Cotton Mather.] [Pillars of Salt: An History of Some Criminals Executed in this Land for Capital Crimes, with Some of their Dying Speeches.] 110 (of 111) pages. Small 8vo, contemporary polished calf, quite worn; lacking first two leaves and final leaf (A1, A2, and G8), moderate to heavy wear throughout with substantial loss of text to leaves A5, D5, D7, early stitched repairs to D6, moderate dampstaining; early ownership inscription of Nathan Cooke on front pastedown. [Boston: B. Green and J. Allen, for Samuel Phillips, 1699]
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Additional Details

A defective example of a scarce and important early work. It begins with a 58-page "Brief Discourse about the Dreadful Justice of God, in Punishing of Sin, with Sin," which Mather delivered upon the 1698 execution of Sarah Threeneedles. The dying words of dozens of miscreants from 1646 to 1698 fill pages 59 to 110. Men and women of all races are chronicled.

A rapist named W.C. did not repent until he witnessed another execution on the way to his own death in 1681: "When he came to the Gallowes, and saw Death (and a Picture of Hell, too, in a Negro woman then Burnt to Death at the Stake, for Burning her Masters House, with some that were in it) before his Face, never was a Cry for Time! Time! A World for a Little Time! the inexpressible worth of Time! uttered with a more unutterable Anguish" (page 71).

One page 99, we learn that "Two Young Women (the one English, t'other Negro) were Executed at Boston, for murdering their Bastard Children" in 1693. They are followed in 1694 by "a miserable Indian, called Zachary, was executed for Murder," who understood very little English, but was able to convey that he had shunned Christianity because "he saw plainly that the Preacher minded his Bottle more than his Bible. . . . This (he said) Prejudiced him against the Gospel. So he lived as a Pagan still, and would be Drunk too; and his Drunkenness had brought all this misery upon him" (pages 102-103).

This slim volume offers more compelling reading than the typical early American imprint, and will inspire existential reflections on your own mortality, just as Rev. Mather hoped. "The most ambitious piece of crime literature to appear in New England up to that time"--Cohen, "Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace," page 55. Evans 877; Sabin 46459. None traced at auction.

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