The Methodist Pocket Hymn-Book, revised and improved, designed as a Constant Companion for The Pious of all Denominations; collected from various authors. New-York: Published by E. Cooper & J. Wilson, for the Methodist Connection in the United States | Robinson & Little, Printers, 1807. Thirty-third Edition. [9856]
Leather over card, about half of the leather worn away, joints cracked, 13.3 x 8 cm (5 1/4 x 3 inches). Lacks all free end papers. (i)-v, (1), (7)-148, 153- 278, 287-290 [of 293]; ends with Hymn CCCXVI. Shaken, leaves are worn, stained, some torn, two leaves torn with loss. Defective: lacking 2 center leaves and 2 final leaves. Poor. Hardcover.
AI 13075.
The Methodist Publishing House sought to suppress the use of this hymnal and other books that had "Methodist" in the name but were not officially sanctioned by the Methodist Episcopal Church. In the first volume of the Methodist Magazine (1818), p. 6, the editor Joshua Soule wrote that "The new Methodist Pocket Hymn-Book" was a "heterogeneous mass [that] had its untimely birth in a back county of this state. It is a libel upon the Methodist Episcopal Church, and a reproach to her name."
"Having several years earlier taken the trouble to copyright its own hymnbook, which was and would continue to be a best seller, the Methodist Book Concern for the first time was encountering the publication of fake editions of the work by others." - James Penn Pilkington, The Methodist Publishing House, A History. Vol. I. p. 163.
With an undated (probably early 20th century) Central N. Y. Chautauqua Assembly, Assembly Park, N. Y. Day Ticket laid in.
With a signed provenance card from the music collection of A. Merril Smoak, Jr., DWS.
