If you use my AOL mail and have had your communication returned to you as undeliverable, please leave a comment here. That will help me resolve this problem
In other matters, I've been prescribed a very potent medicine that has left me non-functioning. So all my projects are in 'slow motion.' But I'm still forging ahead as I can.
The Edgars, brothers John and Morton, are well-known to collectors of Watch Tower history. They were responsible for the volumes of Great Pyramid Passages, as well as a series of small booklets that were widely circulated. One of them, Where are the Dead (not to be confused with the Watch Tower Society’s official publication of that name) was instrumental in Fred Franz becoming a Bible Student. He later served as a Watch Tower Society president.
One book bearing the Edgars’ names that is
available for internet download is called Uncle
Daniels Bible Class Book, and
dates from 1890.
The book was published by Bone and Hulley,
a company that later handled the pyramid books. A close up of the title page
clearly shows the Edgars as authors.
And yet, this is not actually true.
Research has shown that this book was
originally published back in 1850. Then it was simply called The Bible Class Book. The author and
compiler was Charles Baker. Below is the
title page of the second edition which dates from 1860.
The book covers the whole of the OT with
articles, maps, and notes, using the Ussher chronology.
Charles Baker (1803-1874) was a prolific
author. His Wikipedia entry lists around seventy-five works on a variety of
subjects, including the Bible. Although he wrote on the NT as well, there does
not appear to be a companion volume to The
Bible Class Book, which concentrates on the OT. One of his nephews became
the Archbishop of Canterbury. His main focus in life was producing school
textbooks for the teaching of children who were deaf and dumb.
When he died The Sheffield and Rotherham Independent for May 30, 1874, gave a
brief obituary:
Yet 20 years after the last publication of
Baker’s work, the Edgar brothers claimed it as their own.
How could this happen? Modern
sensibilities might question the ethics of giving no acknowledgement to Baker,
but it was all perfectly legal. The British Copyright Act of 1842 granted
copyright to an author for his lifetime and then for seven years after his
death. As noted above, Baker conveniently died in 1874, so by 1890 his work was
in the public domain and the Edgars – or anyone else for that matter - could do
what they liked with it.
The British 1842 Copyright Act was
eventually replaced by one of 1911, which extended copyright to a more
realistic fifty years after an author’s death.
Since the Edgars weren’t going to give Baker
any credit, they took out his introduction, which he had revised for the second
edition. In its place they inserted a Watch Tower advertisement.
This Watch Tower material only took up one
page whereas Baker’s introduction in both editions took up two, so the Edgar
volume simply has an extra blank page following the Watch Tower advertisement.
One assumes this is so that the remainder of the plates would not need their
pagination adjusted.
We are on firmer ground with the Edgars’
pyramid volumes and the series of small booklets which were original and
reflected the Bible Student theology of that time. But as far as “Uncle
Daniel’s” work, all was not as it appeared. It may still be viewed as
collectable, but perhaps not as much as might be hoped.
The following is for sale on ebay as "Photo Sheet WATCHTOWER C T RUSSELL UNIQUE RARE IBSA." I need a good scan of this, but in better condition. Can you help?
