LEWIS, Robert B. Light and Truth: Collected from the Bible and Ancient and Modern History...1844.

LEWIS, Robert Benjamin (1802-1858). Light and Truth: Collected from the Bible and Ancient and Modern History Containing the Universal History of the Colored and Indian Race from the Creation of the World to the Present Time. Boston: Published by a Committee of Colored Gentlemen, 1844.

8vo (184 x 108 mm). Original blind-stamped brown cloth (crudely recased with text block protruding at foot, some minor splits along spine, rubbing, soiling and markings at endpapers).

Second and best edition, greatly expanded from the 1836 edition. Robert Benjamin Lewis was an African and Native American author and entrepreneur and one of the first African American inventors to hold a United States patent. He initially published Light and Truth as a 176-page volume in 1836 and in 1843 published an expanded edition that was over twice as long and published in two volumes. In November of that year the copyright was purchased by four African-American businessmen calling themselves "The Committee of Colored Gentlemen" who promptly printed a single volume edition. Light and Truth forcefully refuted the then-popular notion that non-white races were inherently superior and made the case that all humans shared common ancestry. Blockson 2056; Sabin 40845.