The 19th-century bookseller Henry Stevens.
The Library of Congress copy was bound at London by William Pratt for the bookseller Henry Stevens. F. J. Shepard traces this much of its later provenance in his introduction to a reprint issued in Cleveland in 1902:
A copy in full levant morocco, by Pratt, belonging to John A. Rice of Chicago, was sold in March, 1870, to Sabin & Sons for $155. The same copy fetched $150 at the sale of the library of William Menzies of New York (1875),[8] when it was described in Sabin's catalogue as "one of the rarest of books relating to Pennsylvania." It was again, presumably, the same copy which at the sale in New York of S. L. M. Barlow's books in 1889 brought $400, although it was still incorrectly described as printed in London. After passing through the hands of two dealers and one collector, it reached Dodd, Mead & Co., who advertised it in their November, 1900, catalogue for $700, and sold it at that price to a private collector whose name is not given.
The copy was among several Americana from the library of C. H. Chubbock, a Boston collector,[9] which were sold at auction by C. F. Libbie & Co. on February 23 and 24, 1904, the Library of Congress obtaining it for $600.
[8] Sabin's catalog is dated 1875, but the sale did not occur until November 1876.
[9] See American Book-Prices Current, vol. 10 (1904), p. vii.
[New York]
William Bradford moved from Pennsylvania to New York in the spring of 1693, but what was the first product of his New York press has not been established.[10] The Library of Congress owns two Bradford imprints from this period, neither containing any indication of the place of publication. Nevertheless, both are listed in Wilberforce Eames' bibliography of early New York imprints.[11] One of them, entitled New-England's Spirit of Persecution Transmitted to Pennsilvania, and the Pretended Quaker Found Persecuting the True Christian-Quaker, in the Tryal of Peter Boss, George Keith, Thomas Budd, and William Bradford, at the Sessions Held at Philadelphia the Nineth, Tenth and Twelfth Days of December, 1692. Giving an Account of the Most Arbitrary Procedure of That Court, has been conjectured to be the first New York imprint (Eames 1). Eames states that the work "seems to be the joint production of George Keith and Thomas Budd, including Bradford's own account of the trial. As it mentions the next Court Session of March, 1693, it could hardly have been printed before May...." He confesses that Bradford may have printed it at Philadelphia. The Library of Congress purchased its copy—one of six recorded in the National Union Catalog—for $50 at the November 1876 auction of the library of Americana formed by a New York collector, William Menzies.