An Account of the Late Dreadful Earthquake and Fire, Which destroyed the City of Lisbon, The Metropolis of Portugal. In a Letter From a Merchant Resident there, To his Friend in England

London: Printed. Boston; New-England, Re-printed and sold by Green & Russell, at their Printing-Office, near the Custom-House, and next to the Writing School in Queen-Street. M,DCC,LVI. [1756]. half-title, 23, [1] pages. 8vo. "The Second Edition." [In fact, the First American Edition, preceded by printings in London and York, both dated 1755]. Expertly washed, conserved and stitching renewed; scattered staining. A very good copy housed In a custom cloth clamshell box with a gilt-stamped leather spine label.

Partly-untrimmed. First American edition of this eyewitness account of this terrible disaster on All Saints Day, November 1, 1755 that shook perspective views in the Old World and the New. The Lisbon Earthquake alarmed New England clergy and perplexed philosophers in France. For the former, some ministers interpreted the event to show God expressing his angry will. For the latter, some thinkers saw the disaster as evidence that no such will existed.

The Lisbon Earthquake is estimated to have been 8.5-9.0 magnitude on the Richter scale and lt triggered a tsunami. The devastation was enormous:

"Not long after...a general Panic was raised from a Crowd of People's running from the Waterside, all crying out the Sea was pouring in and would certainly overwhelm the City. This new Alarm, created such Horrors in the agitated Minds of the Populace, that vast Numbers of them ran screaming into the ruinated City again, where, a fresh Shock of the Earthquake immediately following, many of them were buried in the Ruins of falling Houses. This Alarm was, however, not entirely without Foundation. For the Water of the River rose at once above twenty Feet perpendicular, and subsided again to its natural Pitch in less than a Minute's time."

From the Rev. Thomas Prince to John Winthrop in to Voltaire to Rousseau -the intellectual luminaries of the world weighed in. Years later, Goethe would write in his autobiography of his memory as a six-year old of the event: "Perhaps the Demon of Fear had never so speedily and powerfully diffused his terror over the earth."

The earthquake was the "subject of anxious Church sermons across the Atlantic in New England. In fact, an earthquake had also occurred in Massachusetts on the 18th of November 1755, centered east of Cape Ann. In Boston, most of the damage occurred where buildings had been constructed over landfill near the wharves. John Adams, who was at Braintree, wrote in his diary: 'The house seemed to rock and reel and crack as if it would fall in ruins...'" (Kenneth Maxwell)

The Lisbon and Boston earthquakes became, in tandem, seismic cultural events as ministers, philosophers and scientists contextualized one to the other. Some ministers compared the heavy damage of the Lisbon quake to the minimal damage from Boston's and drew conclusions of moral American exceptionalism. Others used the Lisbon earthquake's date of All Saint's Day to suggest that God was punishing the Catholics. At Harvard, professor and astronomer-scientist John Winthrop blamed volcanoes.

By and large, An Account of the Late Dreadful Earthquake and Fire... is written from neither a secular nor philosophical viewpoint. Rather it is a richly-detailed, moment by moment account. It is a linear timeline written by an eyewitness who was literally on the (shaky) ground -when and where the dramatic event transpired.

Charles Edwin Clark's "Science, Reason, and an Angry God: The Literature of an Earthquake" in The New England Quarterly describes this narrow field of literature of the New England earthquake of 1755 -from the sermons to accounts such as the present example- as documenting a "science struggling to be born; a vigorous, aggressive Protestantism on its way to becoming humanized and rationalized; a continuing consciousness of the uniqueness and special mission of America; and a scholarly approach in the best Puritan tradition to the problems of this world and the next." (Clark also provides an excellent and granular timeline of Boston's printing and publication history concerning these two earthquakes.)

The verso of the half-title has an advertisement for the Boston edition of the Indian captivity of William and Elizabeth Fleming which is worth quoting at length: "A NARRATIVE of the Sufferings and surprizing Deliverances of William and Elizabeth Fleming [Howes F-183], who were taken captive by Capt. Jakob, Commander of the Indians, who lately made the incursions on the frontiers of Pennsylvania, as related by themselves. A NARRATIVE necessary to be read by all who are going in the Expedition [The Kittanning Expedition a.k.a., the Armstrong Expedition], as well as every British subject. Wherein it fully appears, that the Barbarities of the Indians is owing to the French, and chiefly their Priests. [Price six Coppers.]"  After Braddock's Defeat, Capt. Jacob had terrorized the Pennsylvania population until a force armed Pennsylvanians killed Jacobs September 8, 1756 in an retaliatory raid. The reader of this pamphlet would not have known of Jacob's death because according to Clark it was published on April 1, 1756.

Evans 7602. ESTC W10073. Howes L-371 (ref). ESTC records only 6 institutions, all in America, owning this. The "third [American] edition" (i.e., the second) is likewise rare. Ref. Maxwell, Kenneth, V - Lisbon 1755: The First 'Modern' Disaster (but if modern, how is it so? accessed online.)