Days of Delusion:

A Strange Bit of History

by Clara Endicott Sears

with illustrations 

First edition, signed.  Boston and New York:  Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924  

Hardback is overall in VERY GOOD+ condition.

• Blue cloth covers are mostly clean, with silver gilt text and illustration.  Corners are sharp. 
• Spine has silver text and is bright with softened ends.
• Binding is strong. 
• Pastedowns and feps are toned.  See photos. 
• Frontispiece, a photographic portrait of William Miller is present and has intact tissue guard.
• Signed by the author on the half-title page.  
• Illustrations are bright and clear. 
• Interior is gently age-toned.  Inside pages are free of writing and intentional marks.
• Text block edges have scattered foxing. 
• PS2024.1120

264 pages. 5.5 x 8.5 inches

A very good copy, signed by the author, of this study of religious and psychological history.  The years of 1843-1844 were marked by religious enthusiasm and hysteria in New England, stemming from the anticipated Second Coming and the end of the world, as predicted by William Miller (1782-1849), a clergyman from Poultney Vermont.  The movement would become known as Millerism, and Protestant sects including the Seventh-Day Adventists would carry on his teachings.

Clara Endicott Sears (1863-1960), of wealthy Yankee ancestry, was a philanthropist and preservationist who worked near Harvard Massachusetts.  For this psychological portrait of a particular (and peculiar) episode of New England history, Sears solicited recollections from those who lived through the Great Expectation and the Great Disappointment.  Those contributions, in combination with archival research, enabled her to draw a psychological portrait of the period.

First edition.  Printed at the Riverside Press, Cambridge MA.  Signed by the author on the half-title page.     

Please see photos. More photos available upon request.

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