[COLONIAL BOSTON (?) BINDING ca. 1747]. No Cross, No Crown. A Discourse Shewing the Nature and Discipline of the Holy Cross of Christ by Penn, William - 1747

Boston: Printed and Sold by Rogers and Fowle, 1747. Seventh Edition (but First American). Good. Small 8vo. Two volumes in one. [24], 287; [5], 184, [4] pp. Contemporary American tooled calf. Flaw to the title page affecting one word and a small tear to one lower outer corner on leaf E1 with loss of a few words but no loss of sense; in each case, a modern reader has supplied the missing words in neat ballpoint ink. Some light staining or soiling; board edges quite rubbed, with some light cracking or chipping to the spine; later pastedowns. Overall a good copy in the original American binding. Preserved in a cloth protective case. This primitive-looking American binding is datable to ca. 1747-1750, and as such is older than all but five of the 61 bindings reproduced in Papantonio's "Early American Bookbindings." While Papantonio's monograph remains the standard reference work on the subject, it focuses almost exclusively on decorated bookbindings which do not represent the kind of books that Colonial Americans actually owned -- or used. That Papantonio failed to include "rudimentary" work of 18th-century American bookbinders is unfortunate. However, in his defense, the surviving number of pre-1750 American bindings is hardly considerable, and of these, many (most?) have been sophisticated in some way. Apart from the later pastedowns, ours has not been thus afflicted; and while quite worn, there can be discerned a dog-tooth roll and thistle ornament at the four corners of the panel, perhaps identifiable by a future researcher. NB: The Frederick Maser Collection (now at Bryn Mawr) has only seven American bindings that pre-date ours.

"No Cross, No Crown" was William Penn's most popular work; its discourses on freedom of religion, and of personal liberty helped inform American thinking in the years prior to the Revolutionary War and beyond. In our copy, the Second Part of "No Cross, No Crown" appears with a separate title page and pagination, as issued.

Evans 6041. Smith, Descriptive Catalogue of Friends' Books, vol. 2, p. 300.