Freeman, Enoch W. A Selection of Hymns: including A Few Originals, designed to Aid the Friends of Zion in their Private and Social Worship. Exeter, N. H.: Published by Abel Brown and Laban A. Tyler, 1830. Second Edition. [8507]
Full leather, "Freeman's Selection" on leather spine label, worn & scuffed with some surface loss at the spine ends, 3 x 5 inches. "Eliza Dudley's Property, Sandbornton, August 21st, 1830" in brown ink on the ffep. 288 pp. text complete, lacks the rear blanks. Good. Full leather.
First published 1829 in Exeter, by John C. Gerrish. Starr, A Baptist Bibliography, has four editions between 1829 and 1831, yet does not cite this second Exeter edition.
"The work of revival which has been carried forth in this town for more than three years past, and which is still progressing, seems to call for a greater number and a more extensive variety of hymns than are usually found in collections of this kind...Care has been taken to select those hymns which are best adapted to be sung in 'times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord.' It is fondly hoped that this book may be useful as an instrument in exciting and perpetuating those glorious revivals of pure religion which so signally characterize this age in which Zion is breaking forth on every side in songs of praise." - Author's Advertisement.
Enoch Weston Freeman (1798-1835), of First Baptist Church, Lowell, Massachusetts. "This collection of 286 texts was reprinted several times over the next few years, indicating that the revival continued and that the choices Freeman made proved useful. The book's first hymn, one of seven by the compiler, shows in punctuation and typeface, as much as in vocabulary, the tone of urgency that characterized this movement..." - Music & Richardson, "I Will Sing the Wondrous Story", p. 172.
With a signed provenance card from the collection of A. Merril Smoak, Jr., DWS.