Web supplement for Wilson H. Kimnach and Kenneth P. Minkema, The Material and Social Practices of Intellectual Work: Jonathan Edwards’s Study Small Bookcase Before Edwards could have been able to accumulate any furniture for a permanent study, he would have started, as early as his college years, collecting books. At his death, the size of his library was 837 items, plus 25 copies of books by Edwards himself. While not as large as the libraries of William Byrd II of Virginia or of Cotton Mather and Thomas Prince Sr. of Boston, which each numbered in the thousands, this was a very respectable collection, perhaps slightly larger than the ones kept by many New England ministers of the time.1 In the seventeenth century, as Hugh Amory has found, a New England clergyman typically had “a few hundred titles” in his personal collection.2 But that number was also growing with the generations and with the increased availability and affordability of printed matter. John Sergeant, Edwards’s missionary predecessor at Stockbridge, was typical in the rate at which he grew his library: when he died in 1749 at only thirty-nine years of age, he owned more than 250 books and pamphlets. The library of Edwards’s father Timothy, pastor of East Windsor, Connecticut, who died at the age of eighty-nine only a couple of months before his son, amounted to nearly seven hundred titles at the time it was inventoried.3 Much has been written on the nature and content of Edwards’s library, the sources that influenced him, and those he used in his polemics.4 He had a desire to keep up with the most current authors, even if he did not agree with what they had to say. As he quipped to the Reverend John Erskine, his chief Scottish correspondent, after reading one of David Hume’s works: “I am glad of an opportunity to read such corrupt books; especially when written by men of considerable genius; that I may have an idea of the notions that prevail in our nation.”5 He eagerly sought the most recent news, sending money to Boston with family members, parishioners, or traveling merchants to purchase the Boston Weekly News-Letter or Boston Gazette. In his Stockbridge years, he received copies of New York papers from Dutch merchant Abraham Fonda. As important as examining his reading habits are to understanding Edwards, however, exploring Edwards’s relation to books as print media or as objects to 1 See A Catalogue of the Collection of Books and Manuscripts which Formerly Belonged to the Reverend Thomas Prince . (Boston, 1870); Julius Herbert Tuttle, “The Libraries of the Mathers,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 20, pt. 2 (April 1910): 269–356, esp. 269–351; Kevin J. Hayes, [ed.], The Library of William Byrd of Westover (Madison, Wis., 1997). 2 Hugh Amory, “Printing and Bookselling in New England, 1638–1713,” in The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, ed. Amory and David D. Hall, vol. 1 of A History of the Book in America, ed. Hall (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2007), 83– 116, esp. 108–9 (quotation, 108). On reading and publishing in seventeenth-century New England, see Matthew P. Brown, The Pilgrim and the Bee: Reading Rituals and Book Culture in Early New England (Philadelphia, 2007); Hall, Ways of Writing: The Practice and Politics of Text-Making in Seventeenth-Century New England (Philadelphia, 2008); Matt Cohen, The Networked Wilderness: Communicating in Early New England (Minneapolis, 2010). 3 See inventory of John Sergeant estate, 1750, Northampton Probates, box 129, no. 19, Springfield Public Library, Springfield, Mass. Thanks to Rachel Wheeler for supplying her transcript of the inventory. For an annotated list of Edwards’s father’s books and book references, see Appendix A: “Timothy Edwards’ Library and Reading,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 26, Catalogues of Books, ed. Peter J. Thuesen (New Haven, Conn., 2008), 363–415. 4 Thomas H. Johnson, “Jonathan Edwards’ Background of Reading,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. 28, Transactions, 1930–1933 (Boston 1935), 193–222; Wallace E. Anderson, “Editor’s Introduction” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 6, Scientific and Philosophical Writings (New Haven, Conn., 1980), 1–143, esp. 1–136; William Sparkes Morris, Young Jonathan Edwards: A Reconstruction (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1991); Thuesen, “Editor’s Introduction” in Works, 26: 1–113. 5 Jonathan Edwards to John Erskine, Dec. 11, 1755, in Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 16, Letters and Personal Writings, ed. George S. Claghorn (New Haven, Conn., 1998), 679–81 (quotation, 679). Titles by David Hume in Edwards’s “‘Catalogue’ of Reading” include A Treatise of Human Nature . , 3 vols. (London, 1739–40), Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding (London, 1748), and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (London, 1751). See Works, 26: 257, 302–4. 1 © 2012 by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 69, no. 4, October 2012 http://jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.69.4.0683 be obtained and produced also provides significant insights into his intellectual labor through the material life that shaped it.6 Seeking New Titles As Peter J. Thuesen has recently shown in his study of Edwards’s book-collecting, book- borrowing, and book-lending practices, Edwards constantly sought out titles, new and old, on a broad variety of subjects that reflected his vocations as pastor, theologian, philosopher, and educator. Titles for purchase or borrowing could be identified through several means. One way he found out about books was by conversations with colleagues and friends in the ministerial and political networks that he encountered in his travels and at college commencement exercises or that he entertained at his own house. Area ministers and longtime acquaintances, such as the Reverend Ebenezer Parkman of Westborough, Edwards’s cousin the Reverend Stephen Williams of Longmeadow, and his fellow laborer in the revival party, Thomas Prince Jr., recommended books to him. But Edwards also recorded conversations about books with individuals whom, one might assume, he would have avoided because of their suspected heterodoxy. These included, among others, Samuel Johnson, the controversial Yale tutor who in 1719 caused the Anglican defection of some in Edwards’s undergraduate class and later turned Church of England missionary. Yet later in life, Edwards conversed with Johnson and borrowed books from him. Also, in an entry recorded in his “‘Catalogue’ of Reading” (a list of titles he had read or wanted to read) written at the height of the Connecticut River valley revivals, Edwards noted a work recommended by none other than Charles Chauncy, the leader of the antirevival party.7 Such social linkages made for strange bedfellows but demonstrate that, however much they may have clashed in some ways, members of the learned class relied on each other for intellectual fellowship. Finally, Edwards counted on his wife, Sarah Pierpont Edwards, to keep an eye out for potential purchases, such as when she picked up a “Catalogue of Books published in London” while traveling through New York City in June 1754.8 Another way a learned person such as Edwards discovered printed works, whether forthcoming or already published, was to consult advertisements, not only in newspapers such as the New-York Gazette but also in the back of periodicals such as the Gentleman’s Magazine, where a page or two of notices of recently published or forthcoming titles regularly appeared. He then committed these references to his “Catalogue” or other notebooks. At their simplest, such entries read something like this: “Benson on the Epistles Advertisement at the End of Taylor on original sin.” This example demonstrates the contemporary practice of using shorthand titles for works, in this case George Benson’s A paraphrase and notes on the Epistles of St. Paul and John Taylor’s The Scripture-Doctrine of Original Sin. While reading Blaise Pascal’s Thoughts on Religion, And other Curious Subjects, probably sometime in 1734 or 1735, Edwards came upon an advertisement that caught his eye and committed parts of it nearly verbatim to his “Catalogue”: “The Life of Monsieur Paschal Collected from the Writings of Madam Perier his sister Greatly Commended in an Advertisemt at the End of Mons. Paschals thoughts with such Express[ions] as these that this single Life is [worth] more than an 100 sermons & would do more 6 See Hall, Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book (Amherst, Mass., 1996); Amory and Hall, Colonial Book in the Atlantic World; Brown, Pilgrim and the Bee; Cohen, Networked Wilderness. 7 For the “‘Catalogue’ of Reading,” see Works, 26: 117–318. For reading recommendations, see “Catalogue” entry nos. [632], [636] (ibid., 26: 287–88; Reverend Ebenezer Parkman); [348] (ibid., 26: 191–92; Reverend Stephen Williams); [597] (ibid., 26: 273; Thomas Prince Jr.); [290] (ibid., 26: 176–77; Samuel Johnson); [365] (ibid., 26: 196; Charles Chauncy). 8 “Catalogue” entry no. [668], ibid., 26: 299 (quotation); “Catalogue” entry no. [666], ibid., 26: 299. 2 © 2012 by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 69, no. 4, October 2012 http://jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.69.4.0683 towards the Reforming the Libertines of the Present Age than if you should Let Loose twenty missionaries upon them.”9 Bookshops were, of course, another option, whether for serendipitous or for prearranged purchases, though it took some effort for Edwards to get to one. Boston was a two-and-a-half-day trip on horseback from Northampton—a trip he made with surprising frequency—and New York City was at least an eight-day trek by coach and ship, but whenever in these or other cities Edwards doubtless sought out the bookshops, purchasing what caught his eye and what he could afford.10 Some coveted volumes, however, were only to be had by working through intermediaries, particularly merchants who sailed to England on business.