Item #6048 The Monthly Offering. John A. Collins, William Lloyd Garrison Lydia Maria Child.
The Monthly Offering.
The Monthly Offering.
The Monthly Offering.
The Monthly Offering.
The Monthly Offering.
The Monthly Offering.

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The Monthly Offering.

Boston: Anti-slavery Office, 25 Cornhill, Dow & Jackson, Printers, July 1840 to Dec. 1841. 12mo (6.5” x 4.5”), black leather spine with gilt-title, gray cloth with embossed floral designs over boards. vi, [1], 184 pp., two inset wood-engravings, both featuring a kneeling slave in supplication, one with the caption “Remember those in bonds, as bound with them” and the other captioned “Have we not all one father?”.

The first and only volume of this scarce abolitionist periodical, comprising all twelve issues.

Published by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the Monthly Offering ran from July 1840 to December 1841 (with no issues published from March to August of 1841) and provided abolitionist news and literature (including slave narratives) to the public at an affordable price. As spelled out in the inaugural issue included here, it “could be afforded so low that every one might procure it, who had a desire to become acquainted with the nature and influence of slavery, and the means employed for its removal.” A year subscription to the Monthly Offering cost thirty-seven cents.

Opening with a sonnet entitled “The Bible” by William Lloyd Garrison, the twelve issues feature such pieces as “Monthly Concert for the Enslaved”; abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman’s short story “Pinda: A True Tale”; John Neal’s short story, “The Instinct of Childhood”; notices of Anti-Slavery Fairs organized by women; references to anti-slavery “wafers”—printed slogans that could be detached and used to seal envelopes; the “Narrative of Nehimiah Caulkins”; hymns and works of poetry; petitions; “James Major Monroe—A Fugitive Slave,” and more. Among the other authors included are Samuel Joseph May (1797–1871), Hiram Wilson (1803–1864) and Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880). A number of works are serialized over multiple issues.

John A. Collins (1810–1879) was an abolitionist who in the early 1840s served as General Agent and Vice President of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the Boston branch of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Collins also edited the antislavery newspaper Monthly Garland (1840–41). A close ally of William Lloyd Garrison, Collins traveled to Britain in 1840 (as did Garrison) to forge connections between the AASS and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Collins's strong beliefs, however, alienated various British abolitionists, and the trip was a failure. Back in the U.S., he focused on organizing and lecturing. Meeting Frederick Douglass when he first spoke at the antislavery meetings in Nantucket, Mass., Collins helped convince him (with the assistance of Garrison) to lecture for the antislavery movement. Upon Douglass's acceptance of the lecturing position, Collins accompanied him for most of his three-month trial period. He is credited with helping introduce Douglass to both antislavery rhetoric and the life of a traveling lecturer. In time, the two became friends. Collins soon came to find the AASS too narrowly focused as he began embracing the utopian anticapitalist thought of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier, leading to friction between him and Douglass. After resigning from the AASS in 1844, Collins moved to New York where he founded a utopian community that lasted two years. In 1849, he moved to California and by all appearances seems to have left radical politics behind.

Most copies of the Monthly Offering include a frontispiece portrait of abolitionist George Thompson. The portrait is not present in this copy and there is no sign that one was included.

REFERENCES: Dumond, p. 41; Afro-Americana 6755; Alexander, Leslie M. Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895 Vol. 2 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010), p. 312

CONDITION: Binding worn, with two-inch loss to right side of spine but covers firmly attached; contents foxed.

Item #6048

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