Douglass, William:

$6,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

A SUMMARY, HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL, OF THE FIRST PLANTING, PROGRESSIVE IMPROVEMENTS, AND PRESENT STATE OF THE BRITISH SETTLEMENTS IN ... With the reissue of the second volume (the original issue was dated 1751). "First American history of the whole country" - Howes. Douglass was a Scottish physician living in Boston. Although not a work noted for its accuracy, Wroth comments, "Modern critics of the Summary have overlooked the fact that its author was the first to attempt this story from the viewpoint of a resident American..." and further quotes a contemporary critic in the Monthly Review as finding it "a fuller and more circumstantial account of North-America, than is any where else to be met with." In his Present State of North America (London, 1755) John Huske wrote that "there is not one Work yet published to the World in our Language that in any Degree deserves the Title of a History of North America, but Smith's History of Virginia, and Douglass's Summary....And this last is only valuable for being the best Collection of facts in general, for a future Historian, that was ever made or published." The completion and publication of the work was interrupted by Douglass' death during the outbreak of the smallpox epidemic of 1752.A work of major importance in the writing of American history.

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