Theodore Parker's Centenary Edition, set of 13 books from early 1900s.
Theodore Parker (1810-1860) was a divisive theologian, Unitarian-Transcendentalist minister and abolitionist. His words and popular quotations would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.
Published by the American Unitarian Association. Boston.
Set includes:
Sermons of Religion. Copyright 1908.
Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology. No copyright date.
Transient and Permanent in Christianity. Copyright 1908. White mark on cover.
Historic Americans. Copyright 1908.
The world of matter and the spirit of man. Copyright 1907.
The American scholar. Copyright 1907.
Sins and safeguards of society. No copyright date.
The Slave Power. No copyright date. Inside cover binding not totally intact.
Social classes in a republic. No copyright date.
The rights of man in America. Copyright 1911.
Autobiography, poems, and prayers. No copyright date.
Lessons from the world of Matter and the world of Man. No copyright date. Covers have age marks. See last pictures.
A discourse of matters pertaining to religion. Copyright 1907. Inside cover binding not totally intact.
This set was once owned by the Leominster, MA Public Library so has markings congruent with that. See pictures.
Set mostly in good condition. See comments above and pictures. Green books with gold stamping are very attractive, look good on the bookshelf and feel good in the hand.
“In 1963, Betty Friedan's influential best seller, The Feminine Mystique, believed to have sparked the 1960s and 70s women's movement, bore the following 1853 epigraph from Theodore Parker:
The domestic function of the woman does not exhaust her powers... To make one half of the human race consume its energies in the functions of housekeeper, wife and mother is a monstrous waste of the most precious material God ever made.”
“Theodore Parker (1810-1860) graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1836 and was ordained to the West Roxbury, Massachusetts, Unitarian Church in 1837. He played a pivotal role in moving Unitarianism away from a Bible-centered faith, and in 1841, when he gave an ordination sermon entitled "A Discourse on the Transient and Permanent in Christianity," he emerged as a major figure in the Transcendentalist movement. Following the sermon, Parker was barred from the majority of Unitarian pulpits because a majority of Unitarian lay people and clergy found his ideas to be non-Christian.
He continued his speaking engagements and became more and more controversial.
He was also a major figure in the abolitionist movement, leading the Boston opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and serving as minister-at-large to fugitive slaves in Boston. He was also the chairman of the executive committee of the Vigilance Committee, a fugitive slave aid society. Parker's aid to fugitive slaves led to a federal indictment in 1854 which was dismissed on a technicality in 1855. Parker was also a proponent of women's suffrage and delivered a well-known sermon, On the Public Function of Woman, in 1853. He served as the editor of the Massachusetts Quarterly Review from 1848 to 1851, and published many works, including Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology (1853), A False and True Revival of Religion (1858), and The Revival of Religion Which We Need (1858). He died in 1860 and was buried in Florence, Italy.”