Port Folio: Enlarged. Vol. II
Item #83954
[DENNIE, Joseph] and DICKENS, Asbury, eds. The Port Folio: Enlarged. Vol. II, no. 1 - no. 52. 16 January 1802 - 15 January 1803. Philadelphia: Joseph Dennie and Asbury Dickens. Folio. 416pp. Partially unopened. Contemporary blue paper boards with paper spine, nearly perished. Front board detached, rear board nearly so. Water staining to first several leaves at fore-edge, some foxing, else very good in contemporary binding. Mott I, pp. 223-246. Complete second volume of an important Federalist literary magazine founded in Philadelphia in 1801 and edited by Joseph Dennie (1768-1812) under the pen name "Oliver Oldschool, Esq." Dennie is best remembered for his essay series entitled "The Lay Preacher" which were mostly didactic but not always religious. Asbury Dickens (1780-1861) was a Philadelphia bookseller and later US diplomat and politician, but as a young man was involved in an unknown incident serious enough to make him flee to London in 1801 and he ended his partnership in the paper at the end of 1802. The second volume of the Port Folio contains several points of interest. Among them are John Quincy Adams' translation of Baron von Bulow's highly critical Der Freistaat von Nordamerika (1797); a dark recounting of Little Red Riding Hood in which she meets a bloody end (first published in London in Tales of Terror, 1801); an obituary notice for Marth Washington in the June 5th issue; and five satirical poems about Thomas Jefferson's affair with the enslaved Sally Hemmings. In subsequent years Dennis wrote scathing attacks on Jeffersonian Democracy and would be sued for seditious libel; although he was acquitted, the Port Folio's critiques soon leveled off. Despite Dennie's death from cholera in 1812, the Port Folio survived until 1827, though in a monthly format.
Price: $3,500.00