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[ James J. STRANG. THE BOOK OF THE LAW OF THE LORD . . . (Saint James, Michigan, 1856. Second edition)]. An original uncut sheet of sixteen pages (eight front & back).
One sheet 14 X 18½ inches, printed front and back, containing pages 273-288 (pages 283, 286 and 288 being unnumbered).
SOLD::$450::
The sheet was once folded into a gathering for individual pages, but never bound or cut apart. Minor wear and weakness at some folds and corners have been repaired with archival tissue. The entire sheet has been encapsulated (not laminated) flat and open between sheets of archival acetate. Medium wear, but nice conservation and presentation. Modern bibliographic notes in pen and pencil appear in the upper left blank corner of page 273.
"AMONG THE MANY PUBLICATIONS OF THE STRANGITE CHURCH," wrote Dale Morgan,
none bulks so large in its doctrinal system or its complex bibliographical history as this expanded edition of the Book of the Law of the Lord. The unbound sheets comprising the book were carried along when Strang's followers left the islands after his death, and for safekeeping these sheets were deposited in small lots in the homes of various members. Over a period of years, portions of these sheets were bound for use, sometimes without title page or preliminary matter, sometimes with front matter printed [later] for this purpose. ["Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints {Strangite}," Western Humanities Review 5 (Winter 1950-1), entry 31]
Morgan related accounts which said that,
at the time of Strang's death there were 1,500 copies of the Book of the Law in the printing office ready for the binder. . . . these sheets were boxed and shipped to Racine, Wisconsin, where Benjamin Wright, an apostle and father of one of Strang's plural wives, took them in charge. "As no one was able to get them bound," [L. D.] Hickey recalled, "we stored them with our people for safety. Some of them have been faithful and taken good care of them: others have been careless and let the mice and rain destroy them." Just when Strang's followers began having copies of the book bound for their own use is not known . . . As late as the spring of 1864, at least 915 copies of the book were still preserved in sheets . . .
One member who was baptized in 1922 remembered sheets being bound up in Kansas City in the early twentieth century.
THE CONTENTS of these particular pages include injunctions against cutting down forests or wearing ostentatious clothing. The extensive footnotes in smaller type criticize books by Henry Howe and Benjamin Ferris, and consider the Spaulding theory as well as Oliver Cowdery, "knowing that he was cast out and hated by his brethren as a traitor . . ." Joseph Smith, we read, was not "a money digger." Rather, "as a day labourer he was employed at wages to dig, not for enchanted treasures, but for money, which tradition said some Spaniards had buried in the bank of the Susquehannah River." (emphasis added)
In 1992, Seagull Books in Salt Lake City offered the Eberstadt set of this book in folded, untrimmed sheets unbound ($8,500 = $425 per sheet ten years ago, presuming that book consisted of 20 sheets of 16 pages like the single sheet now offered here). "Although bound, trimmed copies of this book are not extremely difficult to locate, an unbound version . . . is virtually unobtainable." (Catalogue One, Seagull Books, Salt Lake City, 1992, entry 353).
