[Dickinson, John]:

$2,500 · Offered by William Reese Company

LETTRES D' UN FERMIER DE PENSYLVANIE, AUX HABITANS DE L'AMERIQUE SEPTENTRIONALE, Traduite de l'Anglois. This is the first French-language edition of this most important statement of American rights in the wake of the Stamp Act crisis, containing a spurious Amsterdam imprint, most likely used by the French printer looking to avoid trouble from the authorities. This French edition contains a translation of Benjamin Franklin's preface of Almon's 1768 London edition of the Letters..., here called the "Avis De L'Editeur de Londres," along with "Observations...sur l'accroissement de l'espece humaine, la population pays, &c. par Benjamin Franklin." It also prints extracts from the Pennsylvania Chronicle and the London Chronicle. Dickinson's work was widely published in newspapers in America and accepted in England as a forceful statement of the colonial position regarding the rights of Americans. The Monthly Review called this work, "a calm yet full enquiry into the right of the British Parliament to tax the American colonies; the unconstitutional nature of which attempt is maintained in a well-connected chain of close and manly reasoning." Howes calls it the "earliest serious study into colonial legal rights."When it was originally published in Philadelphia in 1768, Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania caused a sensation, going through seven American editions, two London editions, and a Dublin edition in two years. For a time, the author's identity was unknown, and Ben

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