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Amazing Grace: its first publication.
[NEWTON, John and William Cowper] Olney Hymns, in three books. Book I. On select Texts of SCRIPTURE. Book II. On occasional SUBJECTS. Book III. On the Progress and Changes of the SPIRITUAL LIFE. London: Printed and Sold by W. Oliver. 1779 First edition. 12mo. (148x90mm). pp. xxvii, [1], 427, [1, advertisement]. Bound by Riviere and Son in the 19th century. Brown full morocco, decorated in gilt, joints slightly rubbed. Armorial bookplate of Kennet of the Dene. This is an excellent copy in a handsome binding of the first edition of a popular and influential religious work of the late eighteenth century. Uncommon in commerce, no complete copy having been sold at auction in the last thirty years.
As a boy, John Newton was pushed by his father into the Royal Navy. He escaped, but only as far as a slave ship where he endured shocking conditions. Despite this, he became the captain of his own ship and worked the slave trade. After a series of illnesses and storms at sea he was “born again”. He eventually became a fervent campaigner against the slave trade and was, later in life, a spiritual mentor to William Wilberforce. He was ordained in 1764, and became the vicar of Olney, a small town in Buckinghamshire where most of the population, were, according to Cowper, “the half-starved and ragged of the earth”. In Olney, Newton met William Cowper. During a bout of serious depression (from which Cowper suffered throughout his life), he converted to
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Evangelical Christianity and, in 1767, moved to Olney with friends who were keen to encounter Newton’s intense and simple faith. Together Newton and Cowper worked on a collection of hymns designed “for public worship, and for the use of plain people”. Because of Cowper’s illness, most of the hymns are by Newton. The collection was an immediate success. Most famously, Olney Hymns, gave the world Amazing Grace. It quickly became and remains a touchstone for American religious and protest movements. In particular, it has a central place in the anti-slavery and black power movement. For Newton, in 1779, it was a song of personal salvation reflecting his own process of redemption from slave trader to abolitionist. It has now become one of the most potent messages of political, social and racial solidarity and hope. ESTC. T18634 £2,500