[BROWN, John, Capt. (1800-1859)]. The Life and Letters of… Edited by Richard D. Webb. London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1861.
Small 8vo. Title-page printed in red and black, mounted albumen portrait frontispiece of Brown allegedly taken on the eve of the Pottawatomie Massacre in August of 1855. Original blind-stamped brown cloth, gilt-lettered spine, brown coated endpapers, bound by John Mowat of Dublin (original binder’s ticket on rear pastedown). Provenance: William W. Cheney Jr. (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION of one of the very first biographies of John Brown, published at the start of the Civil War, and includes writings by Emerson and William Lloyd Garrison, correspondence, and the text of an interview with Brown after the raid at Harpers Ferry. The editor, Richard Webb, a noted Irish Quaker abolitionist, was the first to write a biography that included several letters from Brown, written from prison. Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid “was for many a jeremiad against a nation that defied God in tolerating human bondage. It sent tremors of horror throughout the South and gave secessionists a persuasive symbol of northern hostility. It hardened positions over slavery everywhere. It helped to discredit Stephen A. Douglas’ compromise policy of popular sovereignty and to divide the Democratic party, thus ensuring the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860” (ANB). A SUPERB COPY IN THE ORIGINAL CLOTH.