MAGNALIA CHRISTI AMERICANA: OR, THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF NEW-ENGLAND FROM IT FIRST PLANTING IN THE YEAR 1620, UNTO THE YEAR OF OUR LORD, 1698
Book Details + Condition: Silas Andrus (Hartford), 1820. First American edition from the London edition of 1702. Complete in two volumes. 8 Vo. Beautifully rebound in leather binding with gilt and raised bands to spine, and marbled boards. Pagination: 573, 595. Considered to be Cotton Mather's best-known work, and a kind of typological and documentary history of New England. The Magnalia is thoroughly American, as Mather intended. It is a major work of American historiography and an invaluable source of information about Puritan New England. "This, the most famous of Cotton Mather's work, though relating generally to New England, is principally devoted to Massachusetts. It is the most famous book produced by any American during colonial times. Filled with a vast amount of valuable information, it is indispensable to the student of New England history; but its statements should be accepted only when corroborated by other contemporaneous writers." [Church] "This work contains the lives of governors and magistrates, the history of the settlement of New England, the third book relates to the lives of Sixty Famous Divines , and the fourth a history and roll of Harvard College, the fifth is the history of the New England Church, and the least treats of the Wars of the Lord, namely against the devil, the Separatists, Familists, Antinomians, Quakers, clerical imposters, and the Indians." [Streeter]
From the massive occult collection of King Lawrence Parker - academic, dissertation author, and book collector extraordinaire. Firm binding; Parker's bookplate to inside front boards; normal toning to pages; interior is clean and free of markings, save centuries-old inked former owner (Nathaniel Whitman) to ffep and title pages.
