"The Latter-day Saint represents God
as a material being like ourselves, and by the principles
of Mormonism, the weakest saint will be raised to the position of Deity."
p. 22
[TAYLOR, J.] THE STOCKTON CRITIC; A LOCAL MISCELLANY, . . . By "CRITICUS." . . . Middlesbrough: Joseph Gould, n.d. (but 1877?).
18½ cm. 304 pp. Original maroon cloth with gilt-lettered spine. A very good, solid copy. The text fresh and clean; title hinge strengthened discretely with japanese tissue.
::SOLD::$ 750
With an original albumen photograph of the once-anonymous author pasted to the leaf facing the title, and signed & inscribed by the author, "Yours truly, Criticus"
NOT IN FLAKE or Flake Supplement. To find such an unknown, small-town British anti-Mormon publication of substance is always an event. To find one with the author's photograph and inscription is even better.
Small-format
religious periodical complete in nineteen numbers issued (at first,) every two
weeks, thence monthly, between January 1, 1876 and March 15, 1877. Index, pp.
[302]-304.
With articles on various religious denominations, including the Mormons, whose congregations the writer visited anonymously. The writer managed to keep his identity more or less secret, it appears, until near the end of this project. "I have now come to the completion of my work;" he muses in "EXPLANATORY NOTES," pp. 300-1,
there is no doubt it will find a place in almost every private and public library in Stockton, and thus handed down to posterity as a critical and historical record. When the publication was commenced I had no idea of having to be from home so much. . . . I have written many a paragraph in the fields, on the highways, under the hedges, in railway stations, &c. I have had to send to the printer broken fragments joined together in a rough style, and when the proof sheets have been prepared, I have been nearly a hundred miles from home . . .
I have concealed my real name throughout the whole of this work, for two reasons: first, that my visits to the various places of worship might be unsuspected; and secondly, that I might the more freely criticise as an unknown person. Latterly the name has oozed out; but as I have written nothing of which I am ashamed, I at once throw off the mask, and subscribe myself,J. TAYLOR,
Stockton.
STOCKTON-on-Tees
lies just up the river from Middlesbrough where this book was published, on
the east central coast of England not far from the Scottish border. Mr. Taylor
appears to have investigated 
nearly
every denomination in the area except for "the Primitive Methodists and
the Wesleyans, Parkfields. I have not included the churches and chapels in South
Stockton, because that is in another county." p. 300.
"LATTER - DAY SAINTS," pp. 9-12, 22-25, and 40-44. "A SMALL batch of Latter-day Saints worship in the Tennant-street Lodge-room on Sunday evenings.," explains Criticus. He attended their services on September 19 [1875], conducted by "Mr. Littlefair, a clinker on the North Eastern Railway, a very sincere but deluded man."
This book is a small sociological treasure. After Taylor gets through ranting the standard anti-Mormon lines, he finally arrives at a description of the meeting, the preacher, and says something of the local Saints. He is more charitable about the Mormon individuals in Stockton than he is about Mormonism as a generality. Of particular interest is his description of Mormon insistence on the importance of miracles at this late date, and how they tried to avoid the subject when pressed for specific miracles. "The people present" at the meeting, Taylor reports,
consisted both of Saints and sinners; the latter sinner-like misconducted themselves in Mr. Littlefair's estimation, and he was not afraid to tell them so. I thought sometimes he was much too severe respecting those who did not believe as he did. He complained, and I think justly too, respecting the treatment he had received at the Market-cross, declaring that he had preached there before some of the present usurpers (as he termed them) were born. He had been twenty years a resident of the town, he had always paid his way, had paid all demands in the shape of rent and taxes; and he thought he had lived in a land of liberty, but the conduct of the mob during the summer season clearly proved to his mind there was very little liberty in Stockton. He asked in that room for a fair hearing, they must not think of doing there as they had done at the Shambles; and if any of them had come out of curiosity, or to criticise, they were more welcome outside than in. [p. 41]
Ironically, a young British convert named Robert Aveson once worked for the very printer of this book in Middlesbrough before emigrating to Utah where he worked at the Salt Lake Telegraph and then for many years at the Deseret News! For his fascinating biography, see Jenson's LDS Biographical Encyclopedia I:679.