The American Crisis
$1,500 · Offered by Biblio
Uncut, Unopened! "THESE ARE THE TIMES THAT TRY MEN S SOULS : THIRD ENGLISH COLLECTED EDITION OF PAINE"S AMERICAN CRISIS SERIES. London: W.T. Sherwin, 1817. Octavo, period-style full speckled sheep gilt, red morocco spine label, uncut and unopened; pp. [2], 196. Third English collected edition of Paine's American Crisis series, feature his rousing, deathless prose. "These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." With these famous watchwords, Thomas Paine began the first number in his American Crisis. These unfading verses, written as the Continental Army beheld near-certain defeat, are "the most dramatic, most memorable that Paine ever wrote, surpassing even any of those in Common Sense. There are few passages in the modern English language more powerful" (Fruchtman, 89). According to an account by Paine: "I began the first number of the Crisis, beginning with the well-known These are the times that try men s souls ), at Newark, upon the retreat from Fort Lee and had it printed at Philadelphia the 19th of December, six days before the taking the Hessians at Trenton, which, with the week after, put an end to the black times." Washington ordered the first Crisis read to his beleaguered colonial army, and "in the late afternoon light of Christmas Day, 1776, officers assembled the American troops into small
- Publisher: W.T. Sherwin
- Year: 1817
- Edition: Third
- Binding: hardcover
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