A Memorable Account of the Christian Experiences, Gospel Labours, Travels and Sufferings. CRISP (Stephen).

PIONEERING ESSEX QUAKER, BOUND BY COPLAND OF CHELMSFORD

of that Ancient Servant of Christ Stephen Crisp, in His Books and Writings herein Collected.

First Edition. Small 4to. [189 x 140 x 33 mm]. [16]ff, 543pp. Bound c.1840 by A. Copland of Chelmsford (with his ticket), in half calf, marbled paper sides, smooth spine divided into five panels by gilt fillets, lettered in the second, plain endleaves, sprinkled edges. (Rubbed, with wear to joints).
London: printed and sold by T. Sowle, near the Meeting-House in White-Hart-Court in Grace-Church-Street, and at the Crooked-Billet, in Holy-well-Lane, near Shoreditch, 1694.

Wing C.6921.

Signature Xx has been bound out of order, after Zz. The final leaf has a tear repaired without loss and there are a few minor stains, but it is a very good copy. Alfred Copland is listed in Ramsden, Book Binders of the United Kingdom (outside London) 1780-1840, p.55, at an address in High Street, Chelmsford in 1832. The volume was bought by the social reformer Margaret Clark Gillet (1878-1962) from a shop in Old Ship Street, Brighton in 1896, and was removed from her home at Portway after her death in 1962 by her nephew Stephen Clark.

The first collected edition of the works of Stephen Crisp, edited by John Field. It includes sermons, tracts, letters and other papers, some of them with separate title-pages.

Stephen Crisp (1628-1692) was born in Colchester, joined the Baptists by the age of 18 and converted to the Quakers in 1655. In 1659 he resolved to take up service in the Quaker ministry and he travelled widely through England and Scotland, suffering several periods of imprisonment. "What marks Crisp out as an important figure to the historians of Quakerism is that his life - and prodigious output of published works - spanned the first and second generations of the movement" [and] "his most notable contribution was probably his role in the planting and growth of the Quaker faith in the Low Countries" [where he had made three trips by 1670] - ODNB.

Stock no. ebc7797