Books

Bound Volume. Pennsylvania Magazine; or American Monthly Museum. Volume 1. January-December 1775. Philadelphia, Pa., R. Aitken, 1775. 5 x 8 1/4 in. Twelve issues and one supplement, a complete run of the first year. 625, [5] pp., including title signature and the supplement, plus fifteen plates. without a leaf numbered 285-286, but the text uninterrupted and evidently complete (apparently a mis-pagination at the time of printing). Historical Background The Pennsylvania Magazine was the only magazine issued in the American colonies for most of the crucial years of 1775 and 1776 (the only other one being The Royal American Magazine, which ceased publication in March 1775). It was conceived and founded by Robert Aitken, best known for his work as a printer for the Continental Congress. Aitken hired Thomas Paine to edit the magazine, at the paltry sum of £50 a year, just a few months after the radical writer's arrival in America (in December 1774). Paine would edit the publication from February of 1775 to May of 1776. He was also a major contributor, writing Revolutionary essays, political analyses, poems and descriptions of new inventions. Paine wrote under the initials "A.B." and various other pseudonyms, and sometimes with no byline. Paine scholar William M. Van der Weyde observes that, under Paine's editorship, the magazine "was sprightly and interesting, and had, moreover, real literary merit. [I]n his early literary work. we may clearly trace the keen mind and forceful pen which were soon to give the world some of its most distinguished writing." Author John Tebbel notes that "Paine (and Aitken) did not permit The Pennsylvania Magazine to be simply a propaganda organ. It contained a wide variety of other pieces, and enough original material to make it outstanding among magazines of the century." Inventory A run of the first twelve issues and the 1775 supplement of The Pennsylvania Magazine, the only magazine issued in the American colonies for most of the crucial year of 1775. This is among the most important American Revolutionary-era publications for two reasons. First, it was edited by the famous radical, Thomas Paine, from February 1775 until May 1776 (all but the first and the last two numbers) as his regular occupation while he wrote Common Sense. Second, it contains some of the most significant maps produced in America during the Revolution, including battle plans that became prototypes for often-reproduced illustrations. Only a handful of similar maps were produced in America during the Revolution. Ristow describes three of the maps and plans (numbers 8, 9, and 10, below) as "the earliest revolutionary war maps printed in America." The present collection contains the first twelve of the total nineteen issues of The Pennsylvania Magazine, a complete run for the year 1775. Contains the important "A Correct View of the Late Battle at Charleston, June 17th, 1775," depicting the Battle of Bunker Hill. Though only a partial plate here, this view, virtually never found with the magazine and of extraordinary rarity, is arguably the most important American-produced visual image of the Revolutionary conflict aside from Paul Revere's famous Boston Massacre plate. The Bunker Hill image is based on a drawing by Bernard Romans, an engineer and mapmaker best known for his book on Florida. Romans supposedly observed the conflict firsthand, but there is no evidence he was actually there. The plate, crudely but effectively engraved by Robert Aitken, shows the American and British lines joined in conflict in the upper right part of the plate, while in the right foreground Americans load a cannon near a blockhouse. Boston Harbor is in the right foreground, while the city, in the upper right, is bombarded by British naval vessels. Since the plate accompanied the September issue of the magazine, it must have been made by early September 1775. Romans also issued the view on a larger scale, with a slightl.