, Letter, , New York Co., NY, to JS, [, Hancock Co., IL?], 22 Nov. 1839. Featured version copied [between late Nov. 1839 and Apr. 1840] in JS Letterbook 2, pp. 77–79; handwriting of ; JS Collection, CHL. For more complete source information, see the source note for JS Letterbook 2.
Historical Introduction
On 22 November 1839, wrote a letter to JS requesting permission to print the Book of Mormon and other publications in . Along with his brother , Pratt was traveling to by way of , , , and New York City. In New York City, they reunited with fellow , , , , and , as well as several other of the church who accompanied the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on their mission.
After apprising JS of the church’s status in , , and , indicated that members in those states needed church publications, including copies of the Book of Mormon and the church’s hymnal. Pratt had experience printing church publications, including the 1837 edition of the Book of Mormon. JS held the copyrights to both the Book of Mormon and the hymnbook and was designated in a November 1831 revelation to act as part of a group of stewards over the publications of the church. Recent events had demonstrated the vigor with which JS guarded his responsibility to oversee church publications. In October 1839, JS presided over a general of the church that directed that an unauthorized edition of the hymnal published by , a church member in , be “utterly discarded” and “that a new edition of Hymn Books be printed immediately.” Pratt may have wanted to avoid a similar situation by seeking permission to print more church-authorized publications.
At the time wrote this letter, JS was en route to . Pratt sent the letter—endorsed in a postscript by , of the —to , Illinois, instead of to Washington. Pratt either was unaware of JS’s planned trip to the nation’s capital when he wrote the letter or opted to have church leaders in Commerce forward the information to JS rather than allow the letter to sit in a Washington post office awaiting JS’s arrival.
received the letter in and communicated to JS both the contents of ’s letter and his own responses to Pratt and . Even before receiving this letter, JS and other church leaders were apparently already aware of the Book of Mormon shortage in ; a newspaper reported that JS traveled through , Illinois, in November 1839 carrying several copies of the Book of Mormon “destined, no doubt, for converts recently made in New York.” In his reply to Pratt, Hyrum Smith wrote that though copies of the Book of Mormon were needed throughout the country, he could not “give any encouragement for the publication of the same, other, than at this place [Commerce] or, where it can come out under the immediate inspection of Joseph and his councillors, so, that no one may be chargeable with any mistakes that may occur.”
The original letter is apparently not extant. The version featured here was copied into JS Letterbook 2 by in late 1839 or early 1840.
Pratt, Autobiography, 327–328. Parley P. Pratt had been in Detroit for two weeks visiting family after spending six days ministering to “several small branches of the Church” located “within part of a day’s journey of Detroit.” Though a group of church missionaries, including Pratt, had first preached in the Buffalo, New York, area in September 1830 and Pratt had preached in that city while en route to Canada in 1836, he did not record the details of any interaction with church members there on this 1839 journey. Pratt arrived in New York City by 24 October 1839. (Woodruff, Journal, 24 Oct. 1839.)
Pratt, Parley P. The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Embracing His Life, Ministry and Travels, with Extracts, in Prose and Verse, from His Miscellaneous Writings. Edited by Parley P. Pratt Jr. New York: Russell Brothers, 1874.
Woodruff, Wilford. Journals, 1833–1898. Wilford Woodruff, Journals and Papers, 1828–1898. CHL. MS 1352.
Pratt, Parley P. The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Embracing His Life, Ministry and Travels, with Extracts, in Prose and Verse, from His Miscellaneous Writings. Edited by Parley P. Pratt Jr. New York: Russell Brothers, 1874.
See Collection of Sacred Hymns [1835], ii. In 1829 JS took steps to obtain a copyright for the Book of Mormon, but he may not have completed the process. Nevertheless, JS asserted his copyright authority for the Book of Mormon on at least one occasion in 1830 when a newspaper editor printed passages of the book without JS’s permission. (Copyright for Book of Mormon, 11 June 1829.)
News Item, Wisconsin Enquirer (Madison), 9 Nov. 1839, [2]. At this time, approximately eight thousand copies of the Book of Mormon had been printed in two editions. However, not all of those copies were in circulation, as an undisclosed number were destroyed in a fire in the Kirtlandprinting office on 15 January 1838. In December 1839, the Nauvoohigh council reported to the Times and Seasons that several missionaries traveling throughout the country requested church publications “of all kinds” and that the high council resolved to reprint thousands of new copies of the Book of Mormon and hymnbook. (Crawley, Descriptive Bibliography, 1:29–32, 66–68; “Sheriff Sale,” Painesville [OH] Telegraph, 5 Jan. 1838, [3]; Prospectus for the Elders’ Journal, 30 Apr. 1838; News Item, Times and Seasons, Dec. 1839, 1:25.)
Wisconsin Enquirer. Madison, Wisconsin Territory. 1838–1840.
Crawley, Peter. A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. 3 vols. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1997–2012.
“The History of the Persecution,[”] and my poems— there is a great call for Hymn Books, but none to be had, I wish , would add to the old collection such New ones as is best and republish them immediately: If means and facilities are lacking in the West, send it here, and it shall be nicely done for her, and at least one thousand would immediately sell in these parts wholesale and retail The Book of Mormon is not to be had in this part of the vineyard for love or money, hundreds are wanting in various parts here abouts but there is truly a famine in that respect: The took into consideration the pressing calls for this “Book, and have appointed a Committee to raise means for the publication of the same, and also to publish it if we can obtain leave from you, who hold the copy right. We realized that your press and materials &c in the west were not at present, sufficient for so large a work. We have a printer here who does most of our work, he is a fine man, and thorough in his business. he works very cheap and paper is also cheap we have also Book binder who does a thorough business is very reasonable, and a fine man to deal with. these men have worked so much for me, that I can get business done in their line upon accommodating terms, and in the neatest manner.
who is the in this place; of and myself are the Committee. We are instructed to write to you immediately requesting leave to publish the Book of Mormon say, two or three thousand copies. If you will write to us immediately and grant us this priviledge we hereby assure you that it shall be done exactly correct and with the utmost care and diligence and on any terms which will best suit you, and secure to you the proffits which may arise. Bro Irvin is a very wealthy man. is a very careful, prudent, honest man in business and one who will go all lengths for the spread of truth and he will carefully superintend and husband every thing pertaining to this matter that nothing shall go at loose ends, if intrusted to his charge, and as to myself I have [p. [78]]
Parley P. Pratt, The Millennium, and Other Poems: To Which Is Annexed, a Treatise on the Regeneration and Eternal Duration of Matter (New York: W. Molineux, 1840). In this reprinting and expansion of Pratt’s pamphlet The Millennium, a Poem. To Which Is Added Hymns and Songs on Various Subjects, New and Interesting, Adapted to the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times (Boston: By the author, 1835), Pratt wrote with a strong sense of premillennialism, the belief that Christ’s imminent return would rescue humankind from a world that was rapidly deteriorating spiritually. Premillennialism also urged all men and women to repent and watch closely for portents signifying the approach of the second coming of Christ and the millennial era that would ensue. (Givens and Grow, Parley P. Pratt, 107–109; Underwood, Millenarian World of Early Mormonism, 3–5.)
Parley P. Pratt, The Millennium, and Other Poems: To Which Is Annexed, a Treatise on the Regeneration and Eternal Duration of Matter (New York: W. Molineux, 1840)
Givens, Terryl L., and Matthew J. Grow. Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Underwood, Grant. The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
In a January 1840 letter to his wife, Sarah Marinda Bates Pratt, Orson Pratt similarly commented on the lack of copies of the Book of Mormon in New York City. (Orson Pratt to Sarah Marinda Bates Pratt, 6 Jan. 1840, in Times and Seasons, Feb. 1840, 1:61.)
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
The only printing press and type in Commerce were in the possession of Ebenezer Robinson and Don Carlos Smith, who were using them to publish the Times and Seasons. The Saints in Far West, Missouri, had buried the press and type to protect them from assaults by the church’s enemies. By June 1839, the Saints had unearthed the press and type and transported them to Commerce. That summer, Robinson and Smith cleaned the printing apparatus, purchased a new font, and began publishing the monthly paper. The printing operation was small, however, and not equipped for printing a book as large as the Book of Mormon, since printing a book required much more type than did printing a sixteen-page periodical. There were no foundries in the area that could create stereotype plates for printing. (JS History, vol. C-1 Addenda Book, 17–18; Ebenezer Robinson, “Items of Personal History of the Editor,” Return, Nov. 1889, 170; May 1890, 257.)
The Return. Davis City, IA, 1889–1891; Richmond, MO, 1892–1893; Davis City, 1895–1896; Denver, 1898; Independence, MO, 1899–1900.
During the 1820s and 1830s, when the public demand for books rapidly increased in the United States, the cost of book printing decreased only gradually and inconsistently from year to year and from place to place. For a general picture of printing prices in the eastern United States at this time, see, for example, the account books of Philadelphia publisher Carey & Lea in David Kaser, The Cost Book of Carey & Lea, 1825–1838 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963). (Green, “Rise of Book Publishing,” 110–127.)
Green, James N. “The Rise of Book Publishing.” In A History of the Book in America, vol. 2, An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790–1840, edited by Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley, 75–127. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.