Poems

Philadelphia: Ferris and Leach, 1906. 12mo, 104 pages. First edition. Publisher’s plum-colored cloth binding. Boards discolored from old dampstaining; a majority of pages with a very thin tideline stain to upper margin. A good sound copy of a scarce book. Posthumously-published collection of poems written by the Quaker abolitionist, reformer, and poet Henry Simmons Kent (d. 1906), affiliated with the Swarthmore Friends of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. A testimonial on p99 describes Kent’s "great influence in his other and later work—particularly that in connection with the Anti-Slavery movement, and that within the borders of his own religious Society. He was in his prime during the years when questions of vital importance to the whole nation were being settled. He was in the midst of this tremendous agitation, and out of the white heat of this experience he brought to his own Meeting a character tried and tempered to withstand provocation, to allay enmity, to heal differences, and to point the way to better things.".…