Receipt to Philadelphia merchant Francis Gurney for “the Ninth Volume of the Encyclopedia” (Brittanica). A Scot who emigrated to America at the end of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Dobson holds a place of distinction in annals of early American publishing, his credits ranging from the first American edition of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1789) and the first secular music composed by an American (1788) to the first utopian novel printed in the US (1795), Andrew Ellicott’s “first thorough American survey of the lower Mississippi and Gulf regions” (1803), and the first complete Hebrew Bible printed in America (1814). His most ambitious project was the Yankee-“amended” version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which appeared in 18 volumes – with 542 full-page plates – from 1791 to 1798, this receipt being for one of those volumes.