(Boston: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1860).

A LOVELY COPY OF WHAT IS LIKELY THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, we can find no record of an earlier publication date in America. RARE as well, we are not aware of any other copies such currently on the market.
The Rev. William Adams was a scholar and cleric of the Church of England. He was a talented allegorists following in the footsteps of Bunyan. SHADOW OF THE CROSS is a lesson to keep one's mind on heavenly rather than worldly affairs as is learned through the contrasting life paths of three child protagonists: Innocence, who will go straight to heaven; Wayward, who is the wicked youth; and Mirth, who follows the more winding path of repentance and salvation. Following the story is a series of "conversations", a sort of question and answer period which insures the meaning is fully understood by the author's youngest audience. Item #32898

An early American printing, likely the first American edition, the text from the Second London edition, revised and corrected. With the provenance of Anna P. Lowell, of the Boston Brahmin Lowell/Cabot families. With an engraved frontispiece, vignette half-title, and engraved illustrations throughout. Small 8vo, in the publisher's bright red ribbed cloth, both covers paneled in blind, the spine gilt lettered and ruled and decorated with a small gilt leaf, yellow endpapers. 96, 42, pp., 6pp ads. An especially bright and clean copy, particularly for an American children's book of this period. The text-block is fresh and completely free of any spots or stains, the cloth is bright and unfaded, rare for the colour red, with just a little minor wear to the tips and corners and a small abrasion to the cloth on the rear shoulder.