An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd.

EDWARDS, Jonathan.

Item Number: 82411

Edinburgh: Printed by John Gray and Gavin Alston for William Gray, 1765.

Early example of “one of America’s most important and original philosophical theologians,” American revivalist preacher Jonathan Edwards’ biography of Reverend David Brainerd. Title reads in full: An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd, Missionary to the Indians, from the Honorable Society in Scotland, for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, and Pastor of a Church of Christian Indians in New Jersey. Octavo, contemporary sheepskin, gilt titles to the spine, red morocco spine label. In good condition with rubbing and wear to the extremities, toning to the title page and pastedowns.

Edwards believed that a biography about American missionary to the Native Americans, David Brainerd, would have great value and set aside the treatise he was writing that would later become The Freedom of the Will. The biography became an immediate sensation and the most reprinted of all of Edwards' books gaining him wide recognition. The biography has never been out of print and has thus influenced subsequent generations, mainly because of Brainerd's single-minded perseverance in his work in the face of significant suffering.