Author: Harper's Weekly (FIRST ISSUE)
Title: Harper's Weekly (Volume I, No. 1, January 3, 1857)
Description: New York, Harper's, 1857. First Edition. 0 pp. Disbound. Original, complete and disbound issue. Very good condition (light foxing to margins, gentle crease to upper corner of pages, typical wear to spine where disbound). A very rare first issue of one of the finest and longest runnings weeklies in American history. This first issue sets the tone for those to come by having a variety of pieces--a long editorial, this time on the need for American unity (remember, this is pre-Civil War), new inventions (an oven in New York City that can "turn 500 barrels of flour daily into a proportionate number of loaves of bread," topical poems ("A Rhyme for the Atlantic Telegraph" by Martin F. Tupper and "Christmas, 1856"), social commentary such as "A Recent Confession of an Opium-eater." Two longer pieces as well--"A Policer-Officer's Seven Thousand Miles' Stretch" by J.B. Armstrong and the first installment of "The Refugees: An Indian Tale of 1812" by Emerson Bennett--one real life adventure and one fictional installment of a series, the type of features that helped this weekly achieve such prominence. Very Good.

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