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Hervey WILBUR (1787-1852). A Short Biblical Catechism, containing questions, Historical, Practical and Experimental. Designed to promote an intimate acquaintance with the Inspired Volume … Second Edition with the Assembly’s Catechism. Exeter, New Hampshire: printed by C. Norris & Co., 1812. 12mo. Pp. [1-]iii-vii[,viii, 9-]10-49. (Some corners creased.) Contemporary marbled paper wrappers (a trifle rubbed). Provenance: Alice E. Tapply (inscription).

An excellent unsophisticated copy of the second expanded edition of this important early American Bible-class textbook. The first edition, also published in 1812, was just 36pp. Hervey Wilbur “was a pioneer in the establishment of Bible classes, and was probably the first in [the US] to compile and publish a Bible-class text-book”  (famousamericans.net/herveywilbur). The work includes three pages of ‘Recommendations’ signed by various New England worthies, a 3-page ‘Advertisement’, a 2-page ‘Address’ to ‘Dear Youth’, one age with ‘The Constitution of a Catechetical Society’, 28 pages of ‘A Biblical Catechism’ (questions and where the answers can be found in the Holy Bible), the final section of 12 pages is “The Shorter Catechism, agreed upon by the Reverend Assembly of Divines at Westminster’.  OCLC 57269154; AAS #312801; see Shaw-Shoemaker Early American imprints, second series (no. 27547). (Also reproduced is the 48-page second edition, Exeter, Norris, 1812).