How History Unfolds on Paper: Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection, Part IX

[ADAMS, John (1735-1826)]. The Massachusetts Gazette. An extract of Adams’s “Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America”. Boston: S. Hall and J.W. Allen, 17 July 1787. Vol. VI, No. 348. 4pp. on bifolium, folio (387 x 248 mm), old folds. Provenance: Nehemiah Cleveland (1760-1837), a subscriber’s signature. Cleveland served in the Continental army in 1775 and as a state senator in 1811. A FOUNDATIONAL TEXT IN CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY. Adams’s Defence was first published in London by Charles Dilley in January 1787. On 20 April, an excerpt was printed in a Boston newspaper, and one Boston bookseller who listed the book on 28 April sold thirty copies within a week. Between 22 June and 7 September, extracts of the Defence were published twice weekly in the Massachusetts Gazette, while Philadelphia and New York newspapers printed initial portions between 9 May and 6 June.