Pinchbeck, William Frederick | The first original magic book published in America

Pinchbeck, William Frederick

The Expositor; Or, Many Mysteries Unravelled. Boston: Printed for the Author, 1805

12mo (165 x 98 mm). Woodcut frontispiece, in-text woodcut figures; title mounted to marbled wrapper or endleaf, trimmed close with a few pages shaved, first few leaves with tissue repairs and reinforcements, foxed, occasional offsetting. Rebound to style, modern half calf and paper-covered boards.

"The PIG of KNOWLEDGE!!" — First edition of the first original magic book published in America.

"Americans had an opportunity to see a performing porker in New York…when an advertisement for a pig who could read, spell, tell the time of day by any person's watch in the audience, and distinguish ladies from gentlemen, appeared in the Daily Advertiser" (Jay 15). The learned pig in question may have belonged to Pinchbeck, "who exhibited a pig of knowledge in Boston earlier that year" (LP&FW, p. 15). Written in epistolary form, the first missive, from "A.B." to Pinchbeck, states: "Wherever I stop on my tour, I am sure to hear of the fame of your celebrated Pig, and the many different opinions prevailing relative to the mode of his tuition, makes him a subject of general speculation. Some contend it is witchcraft; and others, like the ancient Pythagoreans, believing in the transmigration of souls, conclude that the spirit of the grunting philosopher might once have animated a man"(p. 9). Pinchbeck later outlines the methods by which a piglet may be educated (pp. 94-97). 

The frontispiece features a jaunty-looking pig spelling the word "Boston," the city where the book was published.

REFERENCE:

LP&FW 15-18; Toole Stott 562