Mason, Thomas [compiler]. Zion's Songster; or, A Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs, usually sung at Camp-Meetings, and also in Revivals of Religion. New-York: Harper & Brothers, 1840. Tenth Edition. Improved and Enlarged. [9865]
Full sheep with red leather spine title label, light wear with small dig to top joint, joints otherwise fine, 11 x 7 cm (4 1/4 x 2 3/4 inches). Wood engraving of "View of Haverstraw Camp Meeting, Sept. 1830" as frontispiece. Frontispiece, title page & copyright leaf, (iii)-viii, (5)-348 pp., complete, tight. Very good. Full leather.
Includes a 2-page article in the preliminaries entitled, Origin of Camp Meetings, taken from the Methodist Magazine, vols. 2 & 4. It begins with the "great revival of religion in Kentucky and Tennessee, in the year 1799." It mentions John and William M'Gee, John A. Granade and Caleb I. Tyler.
The 301 hymns are arranged under the following heads: Awakening and Inviting, Penitential, Crucifixion, Prayer, Rejoicing, Trusting in Providence, Christian Warfare, Christian Fellowship, Prospect of Heaven, Judgment, Pastoral, Morning, Farewell, and Additional Hymns.
Rev. Thomas Mason (1769-1851), b. South Carolina; for many years an assistant agent and book publisher for the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was first appointed Assistant Book Agent of the Methodist Book Concern at the 1816 General Conference, and in 1819 was elected the corresponding secretary of the newly-founded Missionary Society of the New York Conference. This Society supported the ministry of James B. Finley in Ohio.
In 1826 Mason sent 100 copies of his new Zion's Songster to Finley to sell. "I have usually put them at 25 pr. ct discount to the preachers on Commission or 33 1/3 for cash. I have put the above at the latter rate which will reward you for the trouble of sales if you can dispose of them shortly. You will please do the best that you can with them and remit me the money or to the the Agents for me as soon as convenient. It may be they will pave the way for som of another Edition should I print One." - Mason, Thomas, "Letter from Thomas Mason to James B. Finley" (1826), Finley Letters. 712. at digitalcommons, Ohio Wesleyan University online.
With a signed provenance card from the music collection of A. Merril Smoak, Jr., DWS.