(AMERICAN REVOLUTION-PRELUDE.) Volume of the Pennsylvania Gazette, complete for 1772. 53 weekly issues complete, each 4 pages, plus 5 one-leaf supplements, bound in one volume. Folio, 16½ x 10 inches, in sturdy early 20th-century ½-buckram library binding; first leaf worn with slight loss and repairs, moderate wear to contents including occasional tape repairs, minor dampstaining from October onward; uncut. Philadelphia: Hall & Sellers, 2 January to 30 December 1772 The Pennsylvania Gazette was a weekly newspaper which had once been published by Benjamin Franklin. This volume covers a year between the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party.
The 25 June issue reports on the Gaspee Affair, in which a British customs schooner was burned by Rhode Island colonists: "a great number of People in Boats boarded the Schooner, bound the Crew, and sent them ashore, after which they set Fire to the Vessel, and destroyed her."
The 11 November issue describes a militia drill by the Boston Cadets under Colonel John Hancock, and prints an exchange of correspondence between Boston's Governor Hutchinson and freeholders led by Samuel Adams.
The formation of a pre-revolutionary Committee of Correspondence in Boston was reported in the 18 November issue, in reaction to the response from Governor Hutchinson: "It was then Moved that a Committee of Correspondence be appointed . . . to communicate and publish the same to the several Towns in this Province, and to the World."
The volume has passed through the ownership of 3 institutions, and the consignor has verified its proper release by all three.