Barber Ann Editor (2 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. First printing, with full number line. A fine copy in a fine jacket. A clean, very tight copy with price ($24.95) intact on front flap. Comes with archival-quality jacket protector. Note: Very fine but for tiny bump on foot of spine, and very lightly bowed front board. F2385.

Issue no. 2112. Folio (approx. 18¾" x 11½"), pp. 4; text in quadruple column; previous folds in quarters, light staining, paper a bit toned, 2 or 3 tiny holes, else very good. The front page prints a 2-column account from the New-York Evening Post, on "Jefferson vs. Callender" concerning payments made by Jefferson to James T. Callender, ostensibly to buy the latter's silence, and this is followed on page 2 by an early, public disclosure taken "from a Baltimore paper" of the long-term sexual "relationship" between President Thomas Jefferson and a woman enslaved to him, Sally Hemings. After being refused an appointment to a postmaster position by Thomas Jefferson and issuing veiled threats of "consequences," journalist James T. Callender reported that "the President of the United States keeps, and has for many years kept, one of his own slaves as a concubine, and that he has had several children by her." The article, either by Callender himself in the third person, or a political ally, is signed by "One of the People." Jefferson made no public comment on the matter. The Newport Mercury, founded in 1758 by Ann Smith Franklin (1696-1763), and her son, James Franklin (1730-1762), the nephew of Benjamin Franklin, is one of the oldest in the country. It was likely the first American newspaper edited by a woman, and was also first paper to publish poetry by an African American, Phillis Wheatley. The paper was published regulary up until the time of the British occupation of Newport in December 1776, and was started up again in 1780 by Solomon Southwick in partnership with Henry Barber. Barber died in 1800 and the paper continued to be published by his wife, Ann (whose name had appeared in the Mercury imprint as early as 1795), and later their children.