[Book in Waste Sheets owned by a Woman:] The Evangelical Primer.

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Curious juvenile religious primer and catechism in contemporary waste sheet wrappers bearing the ownership inscription of a woman. The inscription reads: “The Property of Roxana Lincoln. Nelson July 29, 1820.”

The running title on the upper waste sheet wrapper, “The New and Complete Book of Martyrs,” almost certainly refers to an edition of Protestant reformer and editor John Foxe’s (1516/17–1587) Acts and Monuments, popularly known as “Book of Martyrs,” first published in 1563 and reprinted numerous times thereafter

The present upper wrapper, foliated to the left of the running title (i.e. the verso of the leaf) may possibly be from A New Universal History of Martyrdom, being Fox’s Book of Martyrs… published in Philadelphia in 1807, the only American edition of the “Book of Martyrs” published in America from 1800 to 1820 using the phrase New and “Complete Book of Martyrs” in the title. See, for example, OCLC 1000911119.

The present Boston imprint, The Evangelical Primer, mentions that it was sold in Philadelphia by Wm. W. Woodward and by many other booksellers in the Northeast. It is possible that Woodward added the present wastepaper wrappers.

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