Bickerstaff's Boston almanack, for the year of our redemption, 1785 ..
Subtitle: Fitted for the meridian of Boston, lat. 42' 25⁰ n.
Series: Early American imprints -- no. 18876
Publisher: Printed and sold by E. Russell, next door to Liberty-Pole, by wholesale or retail. Sold also by J. Vicker, leading to Charlestown Ferry.
Published: 1784
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 24
Notes: Attributed by Evans to Benjamin West. No resemblance, however, is to be found between this issue and West's North-American calendar for 1785 (Providence). Like the Bickerstaff almanac published by Russell for the preceding year, it is probably the work of Daniel George. No copy of the almanac issued under George's name for 1785 has survived for comparison, but the calendar pages of the present Bickerstaff issue contain calculations of the rising and setting of "Yard L" or Yard and Ell, an archaic term for the belt of Orion. References to the Yard are peculiar at this time, in Massachusetts almanacs, to the work of George and that of Nathaniel Low, and regularly appear there.

The calendar page notes also include calculations of the rising of the "Eagle's Heart" (Altair), also peculiar to George and not found in Low. The other astronomical notes on the calendar pages parallel those for the same months in George's production for the previous year, An almanack for 1784 (Boston), with sufficient frequency to suggest a common authorship. The statement "George's almanac is in the press" appears in the second line of the imprint of the second and third editions, and the latter has a further advertisement on p. [20].

Advertised in the Independent chronicle, Boston, Oct. 28, 1784.

Signatures: [A]⁴ B⁸.

Evans 18876

Drake, M. Almanacs, 3344