1775 PATRIOTIC ALMANAC WITH "VIRTUOUS PATRIOT" COVER WOODCUT AND "AN ADDRESS TO THE INHABITANTS OF BOSTON" 

Nathanael Low (1740-1808). An Astronomical Diary; Or, Almanack for the Year of Christian Aera, 1775. Boston: John Kneeland, [1774].

12mo, 20 pages (of 24; lacking 2 leaves from C signature). Original illustrated wrapper. Drake 3241; Evans 13384; Hamilton 66; Nichols p. 70.

A  patriotic almanac published in the immediate aftermath of the Boston Tea Party and the opening phases of the Revolutionary War.

The cover woodcut features "The VIRTUOUS PATRIOT at the Hour of Death" surrounded by mourners with the caption, "If Prayers and Tears th' PATRIOT's Life could save, None but usurping Villains Death would have." 

The almanac's text opens with a 4-page essay titled, "An ADDRESS to the Inhabitants of BOSTON," in which Low rallies Bostonians to the Patriot cause. He writes in part: "Your countrymen are sensible the cause in which you are now suffering, equally concerns us all, and which is lost will equally affect us - They are fully sensible the heavy hand of power under which you are now groaning is designed only as a prelude to the utter abolishment of American freedom. For this cause it is, (and the sympathetic grief which they feel on your acocunt) that they unite heart and hand to support you; and for this cause, you may depend on it, they will support you to the last extremity."

He continues with an invective against the British: "But nothwithstanding you are most grievously insulted by a British armament parading in your streets and harbour, in consequence of which your trade by sea from your own port is totally and unreasonably suspended, and your town more closely besieged than it ever was by the most potent adversary in the hottest wars..." 

Dr. Nathanael Low (1740-1808) was a prominent Massachusetts physician and astronomer who published almanacs annually from 1762 until his death. He was one of several Boston area writers who helped fan the flames of patriotic fervor, as is evident in this almanac, published at the opening salvos of the War. In 1780, Low served in Captain Joseph Pray's company in the Massachusetts Militia.

An important patriotic almanac. 

References: 
Milton Drake. Almanacs of the United States. New York: Scarecrow Press, 1962. 

Sinclair Hamilton. Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers, 1670-1870: A Catalogue of a Collection of American Books, Illustrated for the Most Part with Woodcuts and Wood Engravings in the Princeton University Library. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Library, 1958. 

Charles L. Nichols. "Notes on the Almanacs of Massachusetts." Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society. (April 1912). pp. 15-134. 

[Ephemera, Pamphlets, Publications, Booklets, Almanacs] [American Revolutionary War, American Revolution, Founding Fathers, Declaration of Independence, Colonial America, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe] [Astronomy, Astronomical History, Space] 

Lacking 2 leaves from C signature and string.