1856 C. H. SPURGEON. First Edition of Spurgeon's Very First Book. Very Rare!

Here's one that rarely turns up! This is the very first volume of sermons ever published by the Prince of the Pulpit, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The first volume of his Park Street Pulpit would appear later that year, but this is the beginning of everything.

The Baptist Messenger reviewed his early sermons this way: "There is in these sermons so much of sound doctrine which cannot be gainsaid—evangelical savor, spiritual experience and sacred fervor, together with earnest, practical appeals to the heart that will cause them to be most cordially welcomed by vast numbers of almost every class of professing Christians who love the truth as it is in Jesus.”

The present volume was issued jointly by Messers. Alabaster and Passmore and Mr. James Paul, without mention of Alabaster and Passmore on the publication details, and it formed No. 1 of The Pulpit Library. 

Movingly, as a sort of first token of his love and his career, Charles Haddon Spurgeon gave a pre-publication copy to his future wife with this inscription upon the fly-leaf, "In a few days it will be out of my power to present anything to Miss Thompson. Let this be a remembrance of our happy meetings and sweet conversations. Dec 12, 1855. C. H. Spurgeon."

Spurgeon, C. H. The Pulpit Library. Sermons, Etc. by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, Minister of the New Park Street Chapel, Southwark. London. James Paul, 1856. 192pp

This copy, apparently not all possess it, bound with original advert for the first volume of the New Park Street Pulpit as well. 

Brown cloth, faded on spine, small chips; generally rubbed with bumped corners. Interior very clean and solid with hinges solid, and textually quite good with only the slightest of foxing. A good to good+ copy.