Dow, Lorenzo; Dow, Peggy. Perambulations of Cosmopolite; or Travels and Labors of Lorenzo Dow, in Europe and America including A Brief Account of His Early Life and Christian Experience, as contained in his Journal; To which is added, His Chain, Journey from Babylon to Jerusalem, Dialogue Between Curious and Singular, Hints on the Fulfilment [sic] of Prophecy, &c., &c. New York: Richard C. Valentine, 1855. [10475]
Blue cloth decorated in blind & gilt, gilt emblem on front of Dow preaching in front of a tree to a seated crowd, 9 1/2 x 6 inches, joints are fine, book is tight, the binding is very edge-worn with exposed spine ends and corners. Marbled page edges, gold end papers. Two engraved portraits with tissue guards (Lorenzo & Peggy), engravings foxed. Light stain at the bottom of the first several leaves. 508 generally clean pages, some foxing offset from the plates. Fair. Hardcover.
Includes with separate title page and imprint, Vicissitudes; or, the Journey of Life, by Peggy Dow. Rochester: Printed for the Publisher, 1842. This combination of Lorenzo's and Peggy's writings was first published in Rochester by Orrin Scofield in 1842. What we have here is a reprinting of the first part in 1855 by Valentine of New York, who uses leftover sheets from the 1842 printing for the second part, making them one book. The page numbers are continuous from the first part.
Spine title: Lorenzo Dow's Works.
The 1842 printing is no. 1566 in Roberts, Revival Literature: An Annotated Bibliography.
Lorenzo Dow (1777-1834), b. Coventry, Connecticut; d. Georgetown, District of Columbia. A Methodist itinerant, his eccentricities earned him the nickname "Crazy Dow," and the reluctancy of any Methodist Conference to accept him past the year 1801. He had sailed to Ireland for his health in 1799, returned in 1801, after which he went south to Georgia. As an independent evangelist he preached to vast crowds in America, Canada, and Great Britain. He was a great proponent of camp meetings, and it is said that in some places his were the first ever seen.
[Dow] "adhered strictly to Methodist doctrines. He made frequent applications for admission into the Conference, but because of his eccentricities he was refused. He often preached with great power, and many were awakened and converted under his ministry. He was especially skilled in controversy in refuting atheism, deism, universalism, and Calvinism. He spent many years in the South among the planters and slaves, preaching to vast multitudes as they gathered in the forest or elsewhere. He often rode forty or fifty miles a day, and preached four or five times. His manner and appearance excited great curiosity, and his startling and eccentric statements were widely circulated. He was a pronounced opponent of the Jesuits, and of every form of Romanism. He went to Washington to arouse the government against what he believed to be the plans of the Church of Rome, but died suddenly. His writings were numerous and peculiar." - Simpson, Cyclopaedia of Methodism (1879).
