James Oglethorpe and the Early Promotional Literature for Georgia

EV VER since I924, when Verner W. Crane suggested that Benjamin Martyn, the first secretary of the Georgia Trustees, wrote A New and Accurate Account of the Provinces of South-Carolina and Georgia (I732),1 bibliographers of Americana have been uncertain about who wrote the early promotional literature for the colony. Thus The National Union Catalogue of Pre-I956 Imprints lists A New and Accurate Account under both James Oglethorpe and Benjamin Martyn, but cites Crane as the only authority on its authorship.2 Although in i88i Joseph Sabin, in his Bibliotheca Americana, had attributed the tract to Oglethorpe, his successors, Wilberforce Eames and R.W.G. Vail, summarized Crane's arguments for Martyn's authorship.3 In the major bibliography of Georgiana, Catalogue of the Wymberly Jones De Renne Georgia Library, Leonard Mackall commented, It is very doubtful if Oglethorpe himself wrote this tract. See Crane in Bibliographical Essays, a Tribute to Wilberforce Eames, I924, p. 289.4 Such uncertainty evidently led Trevor R. Reese, editor of The Most Delightful Country of the Universe: Promotional Literature of the Colony of Georgia, I7 I7-I734, to suggest that if Oglethorpe wrote A New and Accurate Account, he probably received assistance from the

Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History

• Benjamin Martyn, the Shaftesbury Family, and the Reputation of the First Earl of Shaftesbury

  Open Access•J R Milton•The Historical Journal•2008

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