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A Poor "Member of Christ".
Friday Christian; or the First-Born on Pitcairn's Island.
New York & Philadelphia, D. Appleton & Co. [and] G.S. Appleton, 1849.
Small octavo, frontispiece, 4-pp. advertisements at rear; an attractive copy in the original ribbed and blind-stamped cloth, spine expertly rebacked with much of the original spine laid down; 1857 'Boston Journal' newspaper article neatly tipped in at front.
First edition, and a good copy of this particularly uncommon children's book on the fate of the Pitcairners. The work is chiefly in the form of dialogues between the Pitcairners and the officers of a visiting ship, and includes lengthy passages relating to both Friday Christian and John Adams.
It is evidently compiled from any number of sources, but does specifically mention the voyage to Pitcairn Island of Folger in 1808, the source of the earliest rumours of the fate of the mutineers to circulate in Europe. A contemporary review of this work in American Review commented accurately that 'it is much more interesting than might be inferred from its title page'. The work is dedicated to the New York Bible and Prayer Book Society and their efforts at handing out copies of the Bible, as evidence of its 'marvelous power over the heart of a marvellously wicked man'.
The work concludes with the anonymous author's comment that the recent fate of the Pitcairners is not known, but that he has read that a European vessel had removed the entire colony to Tahiti. An early owner of this copy has accordingly tipped in a newspaper clipping from the Boston Journal of 1857 about the "Removal of the Inhabitants of Pitcairn's Island" to Norfolk Island.