Martin, Moses.  A treatise on the fulness of the everlasting gospel, setting forth its first principles, promises, and blessings.  In which some of the most prominent features that have ever characterized that system, when on the earth, are made manifest; and that it will continue to do so, so long as it can be found on the earth.  By Elder Moses Martin, minister of the gospel.  Read this little book and judge for yourselves; for the wise man has said, that he that judges a matter before hearing both sides of the question, is a fool.  Therefore read, and then judge.  (First edition printed at New York, in 1842.) Second edition.  London: Printed by F. Shephard, High Street, Islington. 1846.
60 pp. 15 cm.

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Moses Martin embarked on his mission to England in the summer of 1846 and landed at Liverpool on October 14.  Four days later he was called to preside over the London Conference.  He labored in England until March 9, 1848, when he sailed for America with a company of eighty Mormon immigrants.

The London edition of A Treatise was probably published near the end of the year.  The Millennial Star of February 1, 1847, advertised the book at 6d. retail, 4d. wholesale.  Accompanying this ad is an endorsement from John Taylor, who urged the Saints to buy Martin’s book so he could provide some support for his destitute family which he had left in Illinois in the care of William Anderson, who subsequently was killed during the skirmishing at Nauvoo.  Thomas D. Brown acted as an agent for the book, Martin sold it himself, and during 1847–48 the Millennial Star office also sold about seven hundred copies.  So one might guess that this edition of A Treatise was published in two or three thousand copies.

Textually this edition is identical to the first edition published in 1842 (see this digital collection). Changes occur in two places in the biblical references at the end: the section “Baptism” has been slightly changed and reordered, and “Book of Mormon” has been redone to conform to Daniel Shearer’s Key to the Bible.  Why the 1842 edition departed from Key to the Bible at this point, while the 1846 edition returned to it, is not known.

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church.  Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]).  Item 316, p. 353.

Used by permission of the author and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.