John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six
Publication: Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1942. First Edition.
Notes: An influential and controversial study of John Brown's participation in the violence in Bleeding Kansas in 1856. Malin was critical of Brown and attempted in this book to separate fact from myth. Brown's biographer Stephen Oates wrote, "While I have learned a great deal from Malin about the Kansas civil war and the growth of the legend, I am dismayed by the biased and distorted picture which Mailn presented of Brown himself." Another biographer, David Reynolds, criticized Malin's characterization of Brown as "a petty criminal devoid of deep antislavery commitment."
xii, 794 pages. Published as Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. XVII.
Edition + Condition: First edition, first printing (with no indication of later printings on the copyright page). A very good or better copy in a somewhat grubby cream-colored dust jacket. Uncommon in the hardcover issue (it was also issued in wrappers) and especially in a dust jacket.
Item No: #366290
Price: $150