Howe, E. D.

Mormonism unvailed; or, a faithful account of that singular imposition and delusion, from its rise to the present time. With sketches of the characters of its propagators, and a full detail of the manner in which the famous golden Bible was brought before the world. To which are added, inquiries into the probability that the historical part of the said Bible was written by one Solomon Spalding [sic], more than twenty years ago, and by him intended to have been published as a romance

Painesville: Printed and Published by the Author, 1834. Cloth. ix, [11]-290 pp. Plain tan cloth. Front and rear boards are nearly detached and the spine is very worn; approx. half of the woodcut frontispiece is missing; lacks pages 287-290. Covers are soiled and stained as is the title page; staining and foxing throughout.

When Eber D. Howe's wife and her sister joined the Mormon movement in the early 1830s, he was not happy. He had slowly gathered information on the new religious movement but it was tough going. This changed when he encountered Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, a disaffected Mormon. While on a mission, Hurlbut heard rumblings that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized from a manuscript written by Solomon Spalding. Hurlbut visited relatives and investigated the possibility. By the time he returned to Kirtland, Hurlbut was disenchanted-finding he had been excommunicated during his absence didn't help. He was reinstated but it is not clear how genuine he may have been. He was excommunicated again, conclusively separating him from the community. Hurlbut-with funding from locals-set off on a journey to New York to ""obtain affidavits showing the bad character of the Mormon Smith family." Along the way he also visited Spalding relatives and began collecting those affidavits.
The contents are largely "fifteen affidavits that were gathered from Palmyra and Manchester, New York, dealing with the Smith family's reputation and seven others from Harmony, Pennsylvania, concerning Joseph Smith's activities in that area … [and] eight additional affidavits having to do with the so-called Spalding (or Spaulding) theory of Book of Mormon origins." Hurlbut returned to Ohio with the affidavits and resumed attacks on Mormons. An ensuing court case may have dissuaded Hurlbut from publishing this material on his own. He made an agreement with E. D. Howe to "have the evidence he had published. I bargained to pay him in books." After a ten-month period of preparation, Mormonism Unvailed went on sale in November 1834. A truly important book and a scarce one at that-this is our first copy in more than twenty years.
The owner, Jonathan Bonnel (1819-1898) was a longtime resident of Carthage, Ohio (now a suburb of Cincinnati) and served as its first mayor. He doesn't seem to have any overt connection to Mormonism. Condition: Good. Item #40579

Price: $7,500.00