MARKING THE CENTENARY OF WILLIAM PENN'S DEATH
[RICHARDSON, Jonathan.]
The general Address (in two Parts) of the Outinian Lecturer to his Auditors…
London, Printed by W. Nicol, late Bulmer & Co., 1822.
8vo, pp. [2], 56, with a lithographed title-page illustrating the medal of the Outinian Society, 7 engraved plates (see below); engravings and tissue guards foxed nonetheless a very good copy; bound in contemporary hard-grained red roan, edges gilt; spine and joints rubbed, corners worn, a few scuffs; note on endleaf identifying the founder of the Outinian Society as John Penn, signature of Madame de Genlis dated 1829, 1839 ownership inscription ‘M.J. Northland’, bookplate of Major Claud Alexander to front pastedown.
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The general Address (in two Parts) of the Outinian Lecturer to his Auditors…
Rare first edition of a revised version of the valedictory lecture given by the Outinian Society on 31 December 1818 to mark the centenary of the death of William Penn (1644–1717), founder of the Pennsylvania Colony, drawing on information supplied by the Society’s founder, Penn’s grandson.
The Address gives an explanation of the origins of the Society and then is entirely directed to the career and particularly the principles of William Penn, based on ‘traditional information’ and ‘publicly and privately attested facts’, the latter doubtless supplied by John Penn (1760–1834), founder of the Society, who, as a surviving grandson of William Penn, succeeded his father to the moiety of the last proprietorship of Pennsylvania. The engraved plates depict William Penn in armour, aged twenty-two; Lady Juliana Penn; Vice-Admiral Sir William Penn, by James Godby after Sir Peter Lely, with a medallion depicting naval warfare; Thomas Penn; a memorial urn to Lady Juliana; the remains of the tree at Stoke Park under which the treaty between Penn and the Lenni Lenape people was signed; and a portrait of Penn later in life after a bas relief by a contemporary.
The Outinian Society was originally founded in 1817 as the Matrimonial Society in response to an anonymous poem called ‘Marriage’ in the Monthly Magazine. It had the object of promoting marriage and improving the domestic life of married couples. Extending its aims to other schemes of human happiness – to ‘the more perfect knowledge of certain less obvious truths and principles of human action’ – it soon changed its name to the Outinian Society, apparently inspired by a line in Homer. John Penn was its president and editor, Jonathan Richardson its secretary and lecturer. The lectures were very popular: Records of the Origin and Proceedings of the Outinian Society (1822) lists well over 1000 names of Auditors who had attended.
Provenance: With the 1829 signature of the educationist and author Caroline-Stéphanie-Félicité du Crest de Saint-Aubin, Comtesse de Genlis (1746–1830), identified in a contemporary manuscript note to front endleaf as ‘a friend of the family’; she fled to London in 1791. An inspiration to Jane Austen, Madame de Genlis was governess to the future Louis Philippe I, wrote several plays, novels, and children’s books, is mentioned in War and Peace, and makes a cameo appearance in Les Misérables.
We find five copies in the US (New York Historical Society, Harvard (defective), Haverford, Swarthmore, Yale), and two in the UK (BL, Society of Friends).
Sabin 26864; Smith, Friends’ Books 2.326 (attributing it to John Penn).
