An astronomical diary, or almanack, for the year of our Lord Christ, 1785... : Calculated for the meridian of Hartford, latitude 41 deg. 56 min. north. .. / By Isaac Bickerstaff. ; [Fourteen lines of verse].

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bullard, Samuel, 1742-1816, author.

Contributor:

West, Benjamin, 1730-1813.

Strong, Nehemiah, 1729-1807.

Judd, Eben W. (Eben Warner), 1761-1837.

Series:

Early American imprints. First series ; no. 18873.

Language:

English

Genre:

Almanacs -- Connecticut -- 1785.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (24 unnumbered pages)

Place of Publication:

Hartford: : Printed by Barlow and Babcock., [1784]

System Details:

text file

Notes:

Attributed by Evans to Benjamin West. The eclipse notes are identical, except for the actual calculations, with those in Bickerstaff's Boston Almanack for 1785 (Boston: John W. Folsom); and the calendar pages, although for different vicinities, suggest the possiblity of a common authorship, or the use by one author of another's work. Cf. Bates, A.C. "Check list of Connecticut almanacs." Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, n.s. volume 24 (1914): 137.

The eclipse notes are practically identical also with those in An astronomical ephemeris, calendar, or almanac for 1785 by Nehemiah Strong (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin). Here the calculations in these notes are the same, and zodiacal positions have been added by Strong, but his calendar pages bear no resemblance to those in the present Bickerstaff issue. The latter are, however exact duplicates of those in An astronomical diary, or almanack, for 1785, by Eben W. Judd, printed by the publishers of the present issue, and are from the same type. It may be presumed, then, that Judd is the author of the present almanac, and that he consulted the work of others in preparing his own, which may then be thought of as an early derivative effort.

An element of mystery persists, from the fact that Judd's two almanacs, the present Bickerstaff version and the one issued simultaneously under his own name, contain eclipse notes dissimilar in both their calculations and their wording. The explanation may lie in an effort by the publisher to increase the salability of the present production by associating it with the work of established almanac calculators. Hence also the use of the Bickerstaff pseudonym--which Strong, incidentally, began using in an almanac published at Hartford by Nathaniel Patten for this same year.

Advertised in the Connecticut courant, Hartford, Nov. 9, 1784.

Electronic text and image data. [Chester, Vt. : Readex, a division of Newsbank, Incorporated, 2002-2004. Includes files in TIFF, GIF and PDF formats with inclusion of keyword searchable text. (Early American imprints. First series ; numbers 18873).

Cited in:

Evans 18873

Trumbull, J.H. Connecticut, 90

Drake, M. Almanacs, 366

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.