THE NEW-ENGLAND ALMANACK; AND GENTLEMAN'S AND LADY'S DIARY, FOR THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1780.... By Edmund Freebetter

New London: Printed and sold by T. Green, 1779. [24]pp., including an in-text illustration. Small octavo. Gathered signatures, stitched. Lower and outer margins of second through sixth leaves trimmed, touching manuscript marginalia but not text. Good. The Freebetter series of Connecticut and New- England almanacs began in 1772, and have been variously attributed to either Clark Elliott or Nathan Daboll. According to A.C. Bates, "a tradition...ascribes the authorship of the early numbers of Freebetter's almanac to Clark Elliott," and later ones, at least from 1776 on, to Daboll (THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY, vol. 24, p.127).

This almanac, in addition to the typical notices and calendars, contains a brief timeline of the history and governors of Connecticut and New Haven. There is also a two page article titled "On Keeping of Secrets" which extols the virtues of knowing when to do so using a story from ancient Rome, followed by brief descriptions of how the months of the year earned their names. Page [22] is illustrated by a woodcut depicting "The Anatomy of Man's Body, as govern'd by the Twelve Constellations," identical to the one present in other Freebetter almanacs. The present copy contains a number of faded contemporary manuscript annotations in ink, though they are sometimes damaged or interrupted by the trimmed margins. DRAKE 331. EVANS 16250. ESTC W10403