BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL.


RICH, ELISHA. 1740-1812. A Poem Upon the Bloody Engagement That Was Fought on Bunker's-Hill, at Charlestown, (in New-England.) On the 17th of June, 1775. Together With Some Remarks on the Cruelty and Barbarity of the British Troops.... [Newburyport, MA: Printed by E. Lunt and H.W. Tinges, 1775.] Printed broadside. Minor soiling at margins, expert repairs to breaks along folds.Provenance: Joseph Philbrick (1725-1801, contemporary ink inscription to verso).AN UNRECORDED PRINTING OF A RARE BUNKER HILL BROADSIDE. A stirring contemporary response to one of the earliest events of the Revolutionary War. Elisha Rich authored four broadside poems on Revolutionary War subjects, as well as three pamphlets. All were printed by Nathaniel Coverly, six of the seven while he was working in Chelmsford. The broadside offered here, printed without the woodcuts of the battle and Warren's coffin that appeared on the Chelmsford printings (at least two printings are known, one with the coffin and one without), is the only non-Chelmsford edition of which we find evidence. Although lacking an imprint, the ornaments used in the border dividing the columns of verse are identified by Reilly as in use by Ezra Lunt and Henry Walter Tinges, printers active in Newburyport from 1774 to 1775. Reilly, Elizabeth. A Dictionary of Colonial American Printers' Ornaments & Illustrations (Worcester, 1975), pp 126, 176, and 180.