William Hill Brown, 1789

[BROWN, William Hill (1765-1793).] The Better Sort: or, The Girl of Spirit. An Operatical, Comical Farce. Boston: Isaiah Thomas, 1789.

First edition of America's first musical comedy—a parody of the author's famous novel. Long unidentified, a presentation copy now held by Yale reveals William Hill Brown as the author of this work. Earlier in the same year he had published the markedly different in tone The Power of Sympathy, inspired by a local scandal which was still ongoing—and which The Better Sort provides a continued commentary on. The epilogue addresses Brown's "slander-loving readers" and comments that farce not based on a real scandal "is a farce indeed." Extremely rare in commerce, it is not recorded at auction by RBH. BAL 1520; Evans 21678.

Octavo (230 x 140mm). 50pp, plus leaf with list of songs (stain on title page and a little foxing elsewhere, a few chips and hole in blank margin of final leaf). Stab-sewn pamphlet, untrimmed. Provenance: Lawrence Public Library (stamp on title).