The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton. With Introductory Matter and Notes by Charles Francis Adams, Jr.

Boston: The Prince Society, 1883. Limited edition of 250 copies. Thick, small quarto (22cm x 20cm); three-quarter morocco over marbled boards; marbled endpapers, top edge gilt; vi,381,(7)pp. A firm, attractive copy, with mild rubbing to spine and board edges; internally, clean, tight and unmarked, with the engraved bookplate of Connecticut antiquarian and bibliophile Carroll Alton Means (1903-1981); Near Fine and scarce.

Morton (d.1647) established the colony of Merrymount in the vicinity of present-day Quincy, Massachusetts in 1626, and almost immediately found himself in conflict with the nearby Plymouth Colony, whose leader, Miles Standish, (truncated) accused Morton of licentiousness, murder, and (most seriously) trading liquor and firearms to the local Native American population. (Morton, unlike his Puritan neighbors, had managed to establish cordial – possibly even more than cordial – relations with the Massachusetts Indians). Morton was taken captive by Standish in 1628; tried, banished, and forcibly marooned on the Isles of Shoals. Morton eventually made his way back to London, where he penned and published the present work. The New English Canaan is as valuable for its clear-eyed and sympathetic portrayal of the native flora, fauna, and human cultures of New England as it is for its open denunciation of Standish and the Plymouth colonists, whom Morton characterized in equal measures as unjust, rapacious, and hypocritical. His book, for obvious reasons, was banned in New England, making it the first banned book in the present-day United States.

The first edition, issued with an Amsterdam imprint (but likely from London) in 1637, has become nigh-on unobtainable. Peter Force issued a reprint in 1838, also very rarely encountered in commerce. Which leaves this well-edited and beautifully-printed edition as the earliest practically obtainable reprint of what may be considered the first open work of civil disobedience in the American colonies. The critical introduction by Charles Francis Adams is thorough and well-sourced, researched with the assistance of a number of contemporary scholars including Charles Deane, Justin Winsor, T.W. Higginson, and others. (Inventory #: 84474)