Dear Friends,
Welcome to Vintage Books' new website, your best source for rare, used, and out-of-print books by and about Quakers.
In the months ahead, we will add features including a catalog of the Quaker books we have for sale and, eventually, a shopping cart feature enabling you to pay directly through the site.
In the meantime, we will tell you about some of our special offerings and list some books for sale that you can order from us by phone or email. Let us know of your interests, and we will be happy to quote specific Quaker and non-Quaker books and pamphlets.
May 17, 2007
The nineteenth-century saw the rise of a prosperous merchant class
in Philadelphia. We are offering biographies of two of these
successful business men, as well as a study of the sociological
factors that influenced them.
Cope, Thomas P. Philadelphia Merchant:
The Diary of Thomas P. Cope, 1800-1851.
South Bend, IN: Gateway Editions, 1978,
628 pages.
Very good in chipped jacket.
Cope was a shipowner, merchant and
philanthropist. In his diaries, he commented on
society, democracy, wealth, the status of women,
and countless other subjects.
$16.00 including media rate shipping.
Tooker, Elva. Nathan Trotter: Philadelphia Merchant, 1787-1853.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955, 1st ed., 276 pages.
Moderately worn, good in tattered jacket.
He began business as an importer of English gold,
turned to specialization in metals, and eventually
invested much of his capital in commercial paper.
He continued to live simply and unostentatiously as
befitted a fifth generation of Quaker Trotters.
$16.00 including media rate shiping.
Baltzell, E. Digby. Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1982, 2nd paperback edition,
585 pages.
Near very good paperback with scuffed covers and remainder mark.
The author traces the lives of fifty families,
comparing the dramatic differences in lifestyles,
public achievements, and cultural contributions
of the wealthy and elite of these two cities.
$9.00 including media rate shipping.
May 15, 2007

The “Quaker Bible” is an eighteenth-century
translation into English of the Christian Bible
by Anthony Purver, a Quaker shoemaker. He
taught himself Hebrew, Greek and Latin in
order to understand the Bible and worked
alone for thirty years in developing his translation.
Another Quaker, Dr. John Fothergill, published this
Bible at his own expense in 1764. Purver’s translation
of the Bible was the only alternative in its day to the
King James Version. However, the book was not a success;
the first edition was the only printing of this work.
We are offering a copy of this scarce Bible
(only the second set we have had
in the past twenty years):
[Purver, Anthony, translator]. A New and
Literal Translation of All the Books
of the Old and New Testaments,
With Notes Critical and Explanatory.
London: W. Richardson and S. Clark, 1764.
2 volumes. Folio (about 14 1/2″ by 9 1/2″).
[Smith II: 437]
Leather bound, worn scuffed covers, edges worn, missing
large pieces at corners, spines have been crudely repaired
with masking tape which has been painted brown, inner
hinges breaking, bookplates, paper browned and foxed, good.
The books are marked “dupl” in pencil on the title page.
Handwritten presentation: “The gift of Benjamin Ferris to
Wilmington Yearly Meeting.” [Benjamin Ferris was a prominent Hicksite from Wilmington, Deleware]
$1,250.00 including US shipping and insurance.