?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 40,000 - $ 60,000
FIRST EDITION (MORMONS.) The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon, upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi. 8vo, original calf, moderate wear, front board detached, backstrip blind-tooled in seven double bands in gilt, original black leather spine label; foxing, a few passages checked off in pencil, bookplate removed from front pastedown with "1835" written above, inked early owner's stamp partly erased from front free endpaper. Palmyra, NY: E.B. Grandin, 1830
first edition of the scripture of the mormon church, released just days before the official establishment of the church on 6 April 1830. This was the only edition listing Joseph Smith as the "author and proprietor" rather than as the translator, and the only edition with his 2-page preface. This copy has the 2 pages of witness testimony at the end, but not the index pages which were inserted in later copies. The first edition was printed with numerous variants; Crawley concludes that "very few copies of the book exist which are entirely identical." This copy includes the uncorrected text for 8 of the 41 variants noted in Jenson: page 212 is misprinted as "122"; page 275, "this is God" is not capitalized; page 286, "ifthou" and "khown" are uncorrected; page 507 reads "Christ, which is in my name"; page 521 reads "rumderers"; page 575 reads "elder priest" for "elder or priest"; and page 576 reads "un-to the baptism." See Janet Jenson, "Variations between Copies of the First Edition of the Book of Mormon," BYU Studies 13 (Winter 73), 214-222. Crawley 1; Flake 595; Grolier Hundred 37; Howes S623; Sabin 83038; Streeter sale IV:2262.
