Beschreibung:

Jefferson, ThomasA Summary View of the Rights of British America. Set forth in some Resolutions intended for the Inspection of the Present Delegates of the People of Virginia, now in Convention. By a Native, and Member of the House of Burgesses. Williamsburg: Printed: Philadelphia: Re-Printed by John Dunlap, 1774 8vo in half-sheets (199 x 122 mm). Lightly browned, scattered spotting. Retrospective calf-backed marbled boards. Red morocco folding-case gilt. The rare John Dunlap second edition of Jefferson's foundation for the Declaration of Independence, and, next to the Declaration, "the greatest literary contribution to the American Revolution" (Parker, Wellsprings of a Nation). A Summary View of the Rights of British America was written and printed virtually by accident. While on his way to the Virginia Convention of 1774, Jefferson fell ill with dysentery. The Convention, for which Jefferson had drawn up the resolutions of his county, had been called by the Virginia Committee of Correspondence in response to the Boston Port Bill and the dissolution of the Virginia Legislature by the royal governor, John Murray Earl of Dunmore. Prevented by his illness from attending the Convention, Jefferson sent ahead a written version of a petition to the King that he intended to propose to the assembled delegates. Although it was rejected by the Convention as too radical, several members subscribed to have the petition printed. The manuscript was titled and first printed, without Jefferson's knowledge, by Clementina Rind, the official printer of the House of Burgesses. Shortly afterward, in September 1774, Patrick Henry (and probably other Virginia delegates as well) took a copy to the first Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and it was reprinted there by John Dunlap—who would twenty-two months later print the Declaration of Independence. Years later Jefferson modestly estimated the value of this slight pamphlet in a letter to John W. Campbell, who had proposed to publish a collected edition of Jefferson's work: "if it had any merit it was that of first taking our true ground, & that which was afterwards assumed & maintained" (3 September 1809; Papers, Retirement Series, ed. Looney, 4:486–88). In A Summary View, Jefferson laid out the principal point that he would argue more closely in the Declaration of Independence: the British Parliament had no right to legislate for the colonies in any instance. A Summary View did much to establish Jefferson's national reputation, and John Adams in his Autobiography, attributed Jefferson's selection to the committee charged with drafting the Declaration in large measure to the Summary View: "Mr. Jefferson had the reputation of a masterly pen; he had been chosen a delegate in Virginia in consequence of a very handsome public paper which he had written for the House of Burgesses, which had given him the character of a fine writer" (Works 2:511). Dunlap's edition is the earliest available—the nine surviving copies of the Williamsburg first printing are all in institutions—and is rare in its own right: fewer than twenty copies are recorded and none has appeared at auction since the Americana Library of Laird U. Park Jr. was sold by us in November 2000. REFERENCECelebration of My Country 50; Adams 119b; ESTC W2506; Evans 13351; Hildeburn 3034; Revolutionary Hundred 19; Sabin 35918