Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Bibliography of Charlestown, Massachusetts and Bunker Hill
We find, thus, early religious works by divines eminent in their time, printed in the old home they had left, or by the rude presses of their new country. We find early American poetry by Johnson, by Oakes, by Anne Bradstreet, - not the sweetest, but what we had. 've find that the once engrossing subject of witchcraft was treated by a minister, a Charlestown boy, in a book that now brings more than its weight in gold. We find some of the marked events celebrated as they passed, some of the well-known inhabitants commemorated when they died. Then comes the long Bunker Hill story, productive of a paper almost to every patriot engaged, and the battle not yet ended in print. Then the town resettled after war, and the printing-press established, the first newspaper, first pamphlet, first volume, first copper-plate, first octavo, first American map of Bunker Hill, - all firsts, until the earlier first that bibliographers sometimes discover. Meanwhile, and afterwards, appear continuous legislative acts on various affairs, and, in time, municipal publications, - at first small, but finally growing to bulk, to multiplicity, and to nearly utter extinction. Then follows a. Wider and wider range of subjects, as the record shows.
One reason, and not a minor one, for the production of this work is a renewal of what the writer has advocated for certain libraries with which he has been associated, the claim of the importance of placing and preserving on their shelves all proper aids and illustrations to Local History pertinent to the position or purposes of the collection. And he offers this work as a suggestion - not a model - of something that seems still to be needed for many towns. The acquisition of what such lists may contain need not be, even now, excessively difficult; for although when attempted by a single person it may be one of those efforts nearly enough impossible to be exciting and interesting, when undertaken by a hundred persons, each of whom supplies even a single book or pamphlet, a large aggregate can be formed by small individual sacrifice or contribution. Pamphlets that, scattered sepa rately may be of moderate interest or value, often become, when put together, like the signatures of a complete and important book. And signatures like these are every year becoming more scarce. Through the country the omnivorous junk-dealer has drawn his net, and the waste-basket received its victims. And yet the old closets, drawers, or boxes may still yield things desired.
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