PRIESTLEY, JOSEPH. Letters to The Jews. * Levi, David. Letters to Dr. Priestley

AUCTION 15 | Tuesday, March 12th, 2002 at 1:00
Fine Hebrew Books, Manuscripts and Works of Art The Property of Various Owners

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Lot 55
(ANGLO AMERICAN JUDAICA)

PRIESTLEY, JOSEPH. Letters to The Jews. * Levi, David. Letters to Dr. Priestley

Two volumes bound in one. FIRST AMERICAN EDITIONS Browned, ex-library. Modern calf. 16mo Singerman 80, 82; Rosenbach 93,95

New York: J. Harrisson for B. Gomez 1794

Est: $600 - $900
David Levi (1742-1801), English Hebraist and polemicist, was the first Jew to write, in English, polemics in defense of his fellow-Jews. In his Letters to Dr. Priestley, he rejected the attempts of the noted scholar to convert Jews to Christianity. This American edition, was printed in New York for a member of the prominent Jewish- American Gomez family, founders of New York’s Shearith Israel synagogue, and active in Jewish affairs throughout the eighteenth century. B. Gomez was in all likelihood the first Jewish bookseller in New York. See EJ, XI col. 78