[Illustration: (_A Collection of All the Acts of Assembly Now in
Force, in the Colony of Virginia_ (1733) printed by William Parks)]
A press that William Nuthead started at Jamestown in 1682 was quickly
suppressed, and nothing of its output has survived. It was William
Parks who established at Williamsburg in 1730 Virginia's first
permanent press. Here Parks issued the earliest Virginia imprint now
represented in the Library of Congress: _A Collection of All the
Acts of Assembly Now in Force, in the Colony of Virginia_ (1733).
Printing of this book may have begun as early as 1730. In a monograph
on William Parks, Lawrence C. Wroth cites evidence "in the form of
a passage from Markland's _Typographia_, which indicates that its
printing was one of the first things undertaken after Parks had set up
his Williamsburg press."[2]
Two Library of Congress copies of this imposing folio--one of them
seriously defective--are housed in the Law Library; while yet
another copy, which is especially prized, is kept with the Jefferson
Collection in the Rare Book Division since it belonged to the library
which Thomas Jefferson sold to the Congress in 1815.[3] The 1815
bookplate of the Library of Congress is preserved in this rebound
copy, and Jefferson's secret mark of ownership can be seen--his
addition of his other initial to printed signatures I and T. A
previous owner wrote "Robert [?] Lewis law Book" on a flyleaf at the
end, following later acts bound into the volume and extending through
the year 1742. He may well have been the same Robert Lewis (1702-65)
who served in the House of Burgesses from 1744 to 1746.[4]
The Library possesses the only known copy of another early Virginia
imprint bearing the same date: Charles Leslie's _A Short and Easy
Method with the Deists. The Fifth Edition_.... Printed and sold by
William Parks, at his Printing-Offices, in Williamsburg and Annapolis,
1733. Inasmuch as an advertisement for this publication in the
_Maryland Gazette_ for May 17-24, 1734, is headed "Lately Publish'd,"
it was most likely printed early in 1734 but dated old style, and so
it probably followed the publication of the _Acts of Assembly_. The
Library purchased the unique copy for $8 at the second Brinley sale,
held in March 1880.
[Footnote 2: _William Parks, Printer and Journalist of England and
Colonial America_ (Richmond, 1926), p. 15.]
[Footnote 3: No. 1833 in U.S. Library of Congress, _Catalogue of the
Library of Thomas Jefferson, Compiled with Annotations by E. Millicent
Sowerby_ (Washington, 1952-59).]
[Footnote 4: See Sarah Travers Lewis (Scott) Anderson's _Lewises,
Meriwethers and Their Kin_ (Richmond, 1938), p. 61-62.]