Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - February - 2009 Issue
More of the Unusual from Garrett Scott, Bookseller
Of course, if Gov. Pillsbury had just read Eliza Bradley's book, he would have discovered an ingenious use for the locusts. Mrs. Bradley was captured by Arabs after a shipwreck off the Barbary Coast in 1818, and she wrote about it in An Authentic Narrative of the Shipwreck and Sufferings of Mrs. Eliza Bradley... published in 1821 (first American edition). Among the sufferings was the cuisine, which she describes as, "About half a pint of slimy water each: and for food some roasted insects, which I then knew not the name of, but afterwards found were locusts..." Item 20. $150.
Item 25 is Dissolution or Physical Death, and How Spirit Chemists Produce Materialization. By M. Faraday. This is a stated second edition of 1887 (though an advertisement within for an 1899 book suggests a later date, unless the spirits were channeling the future). The stated author, the great physicist Michael Faraday, did not physically write this book, as he was dead at the time, so he conveyed the text through the spiritualist Thomas Buddington. Scott notes that Faraday was a public opponent of spiritualism during his life, so "his views evidently became more liberal after his death." $50.
As long as we are on life after death, item 10 is A.D. Baldwin's Immortality. The Philosophy of Man's Spiritual Existence; or, Demonstrative Evidence of Life Beyond the Grave, published in 1893. Baldwin's proof is to use some scientific terms to bolster his theory that man would not be able to conceive of a future life if one did not exist. To paraphrase Descartes, "I think about it, therefore it must be." Right now I am conceiving winning the lottery. $100.
Garrett Scott, Bookseller may be reached at 734-741-8605 or garrett@bibliophagist.com. His website is www.GSBbooks.com.
