Pamphlets of the American Revolution: 1750-1776 (Volume I: 1750-1765)

Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965. First edition. Octavo. Original green cloth, with gold titling to spine, and dust jacket (not price-clipped). Minor edgewear with spotting and dusting to page block; prior owner name and date to front free endpaper; faint toning and spotting to dust jacket with minor edgewear, particularly at lower hinges.. A collection of fourteen influential pamphlets of the American Revolution assembled and edited by Bernard Bailyn (1905-1987). Originally conceived as the first volume in a four-volume series (assembling seventy-two pamphlets in all) to be published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University as part of the John Harvard Library Series, this would be the only volume of the series ever published. The pamphlets included in this first and only volume include Richard Bland's The Colonel Dismounted (1764), James Otis's The Rights of the British Colonies (1764), and Daniel Dulany's Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes (1765). Each pamphlet is reprinted in its entirety and introduced by an essay written by Bailyn with a biographical sketch of the author, analysis of what led to the pamphlet's publication, and an interpretation of its contents. Bailyn was an influential American historian, author, and writer specializing in the American Revolutionary War and the colonial-era Republic. Bailyn taught history at Harvard University and instructed a number of influential students throughout his career, including Pulitzer Prize winners Gordon S. Wood, Jack Rakove, and Michael Kammen, and prize finalist Mary Beth Norton. Bailyn received the prestigious Bancroft Prize in 1968 for his book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), which is widely regarded as one of the most influential analyses of the American Revolution published in the twentieth century. This first and only volume of Pamphlets of the American Revolution was awarded the Faculty Prize of the Harvard University Press in 1965. An exceptional first edition of this collection of revolutionary era pamphlets.