Bugg, Francis | A very rare early account of Pennsylvania

Bugg, Francis

News from Pensilvania: or a Brief Narrative of Several Remarkable Passages in the Government of the Quakers, in that Province. Touching their Proceedings in their Pretended Courts of Justice; their Way of Trade and Commerce; with Remarks and Observations upon the whole. Published by the Author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, &c. London: Printed, and Sold by the Booksellers, 1703

8vo (173 x 102 mm). Lightly browned, first two and last two leaves ("Postscript by Way of Corroberation") printed on the same half-sheet and somewhat more browned. Retrospective calf-backed marbled boards.

Francis Bugg (1640–1724?) joined the Society of Friends as a young man, but because of differences that seemed to have been based on personal, rather than theological, disputes, he left the faith and became a prolific anti-Quaker writer. (The reference on the title-page refers not to Bunyan's celebrated Christian allegory, but to Bugg's 1698 The Pilgrim’s Progress, from Quakerism to Christianity.)

Most of his publications "attack the general tenets of the Society and the practices of the church in England and Europe. News from Pensilvania is his only work to deal specifically with William Penn's colony in America. … A fascinating attack on the Society of Friends in Pennsylvania and an extremely rare work. Copies are held by only a handful of institutions (Harvard, New York Public, John Carter Brown, Library Company of Philadelphia, British Library) and have been in those libraries since the 19th century"(Celebration). This is evidently one of just two copies to have been sold at auction in the past fifty years.

REFERENCE

Celebration of My Country 19; ESTC T25441; European Americana 703/26; Howes B944; Sabin 9071; Smith, Friends 1:343