rare Book - Lord Timothy Dexter - A Pickle For The Knowing Ones 1848 Newburyport

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"A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truths In a Homespun Dress" by Dexter.Printed in Newburyport 1848Missing paper cover.Overall in GOOD condition with some age spots.Please email me with any questions.Engraved illustration of Dexter to the front wrapper and to the title page, engraved view of Dexter's Newburyport mansion to title page verso, engraved illustration of Jonathan Plummer, Poet Laureate (previously a fishmonger) to Lord Dexter, to rear wrapper. Third published edition (first privately printed May 1802, privately reprinted at least four times in Dexter's lifetime, first published, posthumously, in 1838, and again in 1847).Autobiography by "Lord" Timothy Dexter (1748-1806), prodigious businessman, self-appointed Lord, lunatic millionaire, political philosopher, would-be-prophet, laughing stock and latterly, through the reception of this much-loved publication, comedy cult hero of the American Dream. Massachusetts born, Dexter was born to a lowly station, and had little education. He worked first as a farm laborer, then an apprentice leather-dresser; his fortunes changed when he moved to Newburyport and married a wealthy widow, Elizabeth Frothingham, conferring upon himself a sizeable fortune. He bought himself a mansion, and began a series of business speculations which were as remarkably successful as they seemed ill-advised. Dexter, whether through genius yoked to an illustrious destiny (as he believed), or through absurdly good luck (as everyone else thought), became one of the richest men in Massachusetts. His improbably profitable speculations included: sending warming pans to the tropical West Indies (where the captain sold them as ladles for the molasses industry), sending wool mittens to the same (where they were bought by Asian merchants happening by on route to Siberia), and literally sending coals to Newcastle (their arrival coinciding with a miner's strike). It is perhaps not surprising that a man so unremittingly blessed by Fortune should begin to consider himself in some way special - Dexter, however, took this tendency to the next level; he decorated his Newburyport mansion with minarets and put a golden eagle on the dome, created a mausoleum for himself and a garden populated by 40 wooden statues of eminent men: George Washington, William Pitt, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte, and amongst these, himself. His own statue bore the unequivocal inscription: "I am the First in the East, the First in the West, and the Greatest Philosopher in the Known World." He had a particularly eccentric relation to his wife (who, not forgetting his own genius, was in fact the original source of his fortune); at some point in his life, he conceived the notion that she had died, but continued to haunt him as a nagging ghost. In fact, she outlived him - twice; for Dexter once faked his own death and funeral, in order to see how people would react. When his wife, unsurprisingly, did not weep at her husband's funeral (which was attended by 3,000 people), Dexter returned vengefully from the grave to cane her for not grieving sufficiently. He actually died, without children, in 1806, and his mansion was ruined by storms; consequently, his main legacy remains his "Pickle", in which, at the age of 50, he set down his vision of his life and the world in a disarmingly original style and orthography. The first edition was printed without any punctuation, but, after he received complaints, Dexter printed a second edition with all the punctuation supplied in an Appendix (still extant in this edition) along with the invitation to the readers that they may "peper and solt it as they plese", read more

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