This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/20/2022
[TEMPERANCE]. The Foundation, Progress and Principles of the Washington Temperance Society of Baltimore… Baltimore: John D. Toy, 1842.
12mo. Contemporary gilt–lettered cloth (some uneven sunning to upper cover and spine). Provenance: Emerson Greenaway (1906–1990), gift inscription on front free endpaper to Greenaway. Emerson Greenaway was Director of the Free Library of Philadelphia and a noted book collector.
FIRST EDITION. Considered one of the 19th century’s most popular temperance societies due in part that they avowed only personal abstinence from alcohol and refused to endorse legislation making drinking illegal for all and even allowed distillers and barkeeps to join their ranks, so long as they promised not to drink themselves. While other societies denounced alcoholics, the Washington Temperance Society preached reform because “a reformed man has the best access to a drunkard’s mind and heart…he best knows, and can enter into all a drunkards feelings”. OCLC locates only one copy in institutional holdings.