Discourses on Various Subjects, including several on Particular Occasions

Birmingham, Printed for the Author, by Pearson and Rollason..., 1787. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, 212 x 129 mms., pp. xvi, 464 [465 - 468 adverts], recent full plum calf, gilt spine, red morocco label; some foxing of text. Inscribed on title-page, "The Author to / Bellas & Latitia / 1801", apparently in the hand of the first-named of the two recipients. Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) published these discourses -- mostly sermons and essays on theological matters -- while living in Birmingham, and in them engaged in a certain amount of controversy about monotheism. He must have had a copy of the book with him in his home in the village of Northumberland, Pennsylvania, as it was there that he was in 1801. The first recipient named in the inscription is Priestley's young friend and sometime amanuensis Hugh Bellas (1780-1863), later in life an attorney-at-law, and the lawyer for the local Unitarian congregation. Bellas was also one of the earliest biographers of Joseph Priestley, as his vivid memoir of Priestley's life in America from 1796 to his death in 1804, printed by Dr Sprague in the mid-nineteenth century, is regarded as a valuable account of the last years of the great scientist's life (William B. Sprague, ed., Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit [1865], pp. 305-308). In it, Bellas refers in fact to the year in the inscription here, 1801, as follows: "In the autumn of 1801, Northumberland suffered severely from fevers; and Dr. Priestley, among others, was prostrated for some weeks. During his illness, I happened to reside in the same house with him, and heard his expressions of resignation to the Divine will, which were uttered in such a tone and so frequently as to be exceedingly affecting" (p. 306). Earlier in the memoir, Bellas speaks of the close relationship he had not only with Priestley but with Priestley's books: "In 1796, at the age of sixteen, I was employed as an apprentice in a store which the Doctor frequented. From the close of that year until the autumn of 1803, I was in the practise, with but little interruption, of borrowing from him miscellaneous books. As he perceived my ardour in acquiring knowledge, and was always on the alert to aid the improvement of young men, he uniformly treated me with great kindness and indulgence when I called upon him. During the period of about seven years, I saw and conversed with him, I suppose, upon an average, once every two weeks" (p. 305). Who is the second named recipient, "Latitia"? Did Priestley simply misremember the name of Hugh Bellas's wife? Her name was actually Esther. Another possibility is that Hugh's sister, or some other female relative known to Priestley, is referenced here. Crook TR/58. ESTC T32018 records no presentation copies at all (to anyone) of Priestley's Discourses on Various Subjects (1787). The ESTC records two presentation copies of other books Priestley gave to his young friend Hugh Bellas -- these are Letters to Mr. Volney (Philadelphia, 1797), 28 pages in length, and Observations on the Increase of Infidelity (Philadelphia, 1797), 179 pages in length -- both held by the Library Company of Philadelphia. The presentation volume on offer is by far the most substantial -- at nearly five hundred pages.