Broadside on cloth: Mary's Lamb in Sunday Lessons, No. 1

Boston: Boston Chemical Printing Company, 1830. Unbound. Very Good. First edition. Printed on cotton cloth hemmed on four sides. Approximately 12" x 11.5". Several modest and scattered rust stains, but no fraying or other wear, a very good or better example. Printed in three columns divided by lines of type ornaments within an overall border of type ornaments. Cuts at head of each column are of boys in Sunday School; a boy playing with a lamb; and a woman reading to young girls. Five other hymns or prayers surrounding the central poem: *Mary's Lamb* by Mrs. Hale. Better known now by the first line, "Mary Had a Little Lamb," Hale's poem was first published in the magazine *The Juvenile Miscellany.* (Boston: Putnam and Hunt, September, 1830) and in book form in *Poems for Our Children*, also in 1830. A revised version was published by Hale in *The School Song Book*. (Boston: Allen & Ticknor, 1834). Our version seems to be identical in text to the original version, so our presumption is that this precedes the 1834 *The School Song Book*. According to *OCLC* six examples (of four separate titles, not including this one) of broadsides on cloth by this publisher/manufacturer exist in American libraries, one apparently dated 1830, the others attributed to that decade. Thomas Edison made this poem the first words ever recorded when he spoke them into his new invention, the phonograph, in 1877. Rare.