The Songs of Zion.; A collection of choice songs. Especially Selected and Arranged for The Home and for all Meetings, Sunday Schools and Gatherings of Elders and Saints in the Mission Field

Chicago: Missions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Printed by Zion's Printing), 1918. Leather. 269 numbered songs. 4 pp. of index. Full black flexible leather with title and design of Salt Lake tabernacle organ pipes in gilt on front cover. Floral endsheets. Cracking to pastedowns, moisture stain to top third of pages, minor rubbing to corners.

Modern LDS Church members might be surprised to learn that their predecessors lived in a much more fluid world of hymn and songbooks. Recognizing this, in 1908, the Northern States Mission produced the first edition of Songs of Zion. In the preface, they noted it "contains selections from all the song and music books of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with additional choice copyright songs, suggested by the Mission Presidents of the United States. … The former confusion of pages and books is avoided by bringing together in one book the popular and most used songs of the Church, making it unnecessary for the presiding officer to announce more than one number." The combined missions published three editions of the original format and then issued an expanded edition in 1912 with two dozen additional songs. The Church History Library catalog description of this revised edition notes: "Compiled by nine United States mission presidents. Song book to address sectarian world in its own terms by providing songs functional to Mormon proselyting. More than 40% of hymn tunes were non-Mormon. Out of a total of 260 tunes, the remaining 144 combined the best-liked songs from the Psalmody and the auxiliary organization songbooks." We have only seen a handful of leather copies from this era and those have been in inferior condition. Condition: Very good. Item #33584

Price: $150.00