Updated August 10: This has been sold.
This is a remarkable historical document, with contemporaneous accounts of what was going on in the Colonies and the discussion about them in London.
It's fascinating to read, which is why I've included so many photos of the pages of text.
As you can see, our version is in good condition and includes two maps that are often missing, having been removed and framed: A map of Boston and a map showing 100 miles around Boston.
— Lee Wright | Founder
The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle. Volume XLV. London: D. Henry, 1775. This is the first edition of the 12 issues of Gentleman's Magazine for 1775, a turning point in Revolutionary history, containing a very early English printing of America's Declaration on the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms—the prelude to the Declaration of Independence—and very probably the first English magazine publication of America's Olive Branch Petition. With eight folding maps, including two detailing revolutionary conflicts in Boston.
Throughout 1775 the struggle for independence became "a battle of words, and the noise of musketry at Lexington and Concord was merely the opening exchange of a great campaign of the rhetoricians... The Continental Congress had organized an army, appointed a commander in chief... but its chief business during this time was in the area of forensics: the drafting of a Petition to the King, A Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms... an Appeal to the Inhabitants of Canada, and an Address to the People of Great Britain. These were the major weapons of the Americans in this warfare of words" (Boyd, Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography). This scarce first edition contains those and other Revolutionary works bound in this volume's complete 1775 issues of Gentleman's Magazine, with many of the very earliest British printings of crucial Revolutionary documents.
Of special importance here is America's Declaration on the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (357-60), which "was the culmination of a series of documents designed by the Continental Congress... it had issued only one other 'declaration' as a formal precedent for the Declaration of Independence: the Declaration by the Representatives of the United Colonies... Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms of July 6, 1775... marks a decisive turning point in the struggle between Britain and its American colonies." With the precise intent of addressing "the judgment of a wider world... Congress rapidly dispatched this document across the Atlantic to be printed in London" and is printed here within one month of its publication in Philadelphia. (Armitage, Declaration of Independence, 31-2). Also notable here is the Olive Branch Petition (433-5), John Dickinson's historic attempt at conciliation, the Address to the Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec (25-7), accounts of colonial resistance, fiery objections to British laws, and reports of battles at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and Ticonderoga, correspondence by Washington, Franklin and others, and General Gage's Proclamation of June 12, 1775, in which he labeled rebellious colonists "incendiaries and traitors in a fatal progression of crime" (331).
Further Revolutionary materials include the Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain (397-401), a map of attack on Bunker Hill (416), Jefferson's response to British minister Lord North's proposal for conciliation (426-8), and seven folding maps, including one of Boston Harbor dated shortly before shots rang out in Lexington and Concord (41), and another displaying a "New and Correct Plan of the Town of Boston (493) that notes "Charles Town in Ruins" to indicate the Battle of Bunker Hill. One of the very first English printings of Causes and Necessities of Taking Up Arms (with corrections made in standing type as in the 1775 London pamphlet), appearing in the August issue before its September London Magazine printing; preceded by the 1775 Philadelphia publication. Believed to be the first British printing of the Olive Branch Petition, published same month as its appearance in London Magazine, no priority established. Includes folding map '100 Miles round Boston."
