1770 FREEHOLDER'S MAGAZINE - FIRST ORIGINAL ENGRAVING OF BOSTON MASSACRE

Collection of excerpts from the 18th-century English periodical The Freeholder's Magazine. This particular copy is exceptionally rare and doesn't exist; it includes elements from THREE volumes for the entire year of 1770 (January - December). It appears to have been specially bound in the 18th century. Volume I: January-February; Volume II: March-August; Volume III: September-December. Subtitled, "Monthly repository of politics, literature, and useful entertainment etc., The whole forming a complete miscellany of Philosophy, Gallantry, Mathematics, Biography, Criticism, Morality, History, Poetry etc., by a Society of Gentlemen." Featuring an engraved frontispiece, and containing writings on the Magna Carta, piety and religion, patriotism, the Falkland Islands, Colonialism, and many other topical subjects. The May issue features the engraving of the fatal Boston Massacre, accompanied by a 7-page description of the event (pages 136-141). The engraving is by an unknown artist, taken from the earlier Henry Pelham engraving, as opposed to the more famous re-engraving by Paul Revere. It is original to this magazine and the only contemporary image known without the dog in the foreground. “The third English printing of the Massacre plate is in The Freeholder’s Magazine for May, 1770, London, printed for Isaac Fell, opposite page 136, accompanied by a six-page article giving an account of the massacre. The print, which is newly engraved, follows the Dilly print [published as the frontis to the London edition of The Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre] carefully. There are minor differences…. The outstanding difference is the omission of the nonchalant dog in the foreground, the only instance in contemporaneous prints where this prominent animal is omitted.” (Brigham, p. 70)