Leeds, Titan:

$15,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

THE AMERICAN ALMANACK FOR THE YEAR OF CHRISTIAN ACCOUNT, 1738.... A fine copy of Titan Leeds' American Almanack for 1738, the year of the author's death. The death of Titan Leeds was a subject of some controversy earlier in the decade, when Benjamin Franklin, writing as Richard Saunders in the first issue of the "Poor Richard" almanac (and inspired by Jonathan Swift's famous Bickerstaff hoax of 1708), predicted that his "good friend and fellow-student" would die "on October 17, 1733, 3 hr. 29 m., P.M., at the very instant of the conjunction of the Sun and Mercury." When Leeds announced his survival the following year, launching invectives at his competitor, "Saunders" responded in his 1734 almanac that his "dear friend" must indeed have died, as the true "Mr. Leeds was too well bred to use any man so indecently and so scurrilously" as he had used "Poor Richard" in his protests. For the next several years Richard Saunders continued to insist that Leeds was no more, and following the announcement of Leeds' actual death in 1738, Saunders printed a letter from Leeds' ghost admitting "I did actually die at that moment, precisely at the hour you mentioned, with a variation of 5 minutes, 53 seconds." The "ghost" of Titan Leeds, in fact, hovered in the imprint of The American Almanack through its 1746 issue, the final year for which Leeds was said to have calculated the calendar before dying.In addition to the calendar, the 1738 American Almanack contains schedules for courts, Quaker

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