The Isle Of Pines (1668) / and An Essay in Bibliography by Worthington Chauncey Ford

My curiosity on the Isle of Pines was aroused by the sale of a copy in London and New York in 1917, and was increased by the discovery of two distinct issues in the Dowse Library, in the Massachusetts Historical Society. As my material grew in bulk and the history of this hoax perpetrated in the seventeenth century developed, I thought it of sufficient interest to communicate an outline of the story to the Club of Odd Volumes, of Boston, October 23, 1918. The results of my investigations are more fully given in the present volume. I acknowledge my indebtedness to the essay of Max Hippe, Eine vor-De-foesche Englische Robinsonade, published in Eugen Kölbing's Englische Studien xix. 66.
WORTHINGTON CHAUNCEY FORD
Boston, February, 1920
A True Relation of certain Engliſh perſons, Who in the dayes of Queen Elizabeth making a Voyage to the Eaſt India, were caſt away, and wracked on the Iſland near to the Coaſt of Auſtralis, and all drowned, except one Man and four Women, whereof one was a Negro. And now lately Ann Dom. 1667, A Dutch Ship driven by foul weather there, by chance have found their Poſterity (ſpeaking good Engliſh) to amount to ten or twelve thouſand perſons, as they suppoſe. The whole Relation follows, written, and left by the Man himſelf a little before his death, and declared to the Dutch by His Grandchild.
The scene opens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the year 1668, where in one of the college buildings a contest between two rival printers had been waged for some years. Marmaduke Johnson, a trained and experienced printer, to whose ability the Indian Bible is largely due, had ceased to be the printer of the corporation, or Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, but still had a press and, what was better, a fresh outfit of type, sent over by the corporation and entrusted to the keeping of John Eliot, the Apostle. Samuel Green had become a printer, though without previous training, and was at this time printer to the college, a position of vantage against a rival, because it must have carried with it countenance from the authorities in Boston, and public printing then as now constituted an item to a press of some income and some perquisites. By seeking to marry Green's daughter before his English wife had ceased to be, Johnson had created a prejudice, public as well as private, against himself.{1}