Sunlight and Shadow or, Gleanings From My Life Work. Comprising Personal experiences and opinions, anecdotes, incidents, and reminiscences, gathered from Thirty - Seven years' experience on the platform and among the people. By John B. Gough. With full - page engravings, and Steel-plate portrait of the author. I will restore to you the years that locust hath eaten. Joel ii. 25.Hartford, Conn.: A. D. Worthington and Company. 1882.Maroon cloth, 9 x 6, 542 pages, outer edge of covers faded, otherwise the book is in fine clean condition. Everything is tight.

John Bartholomew Gough (1817-1886), born in England, Gough immigrated to the United States when he was twelve years old. He learned the bookbinder's trade and later took to the stage. His mother died of a stroke and Gough, despondent, began to drink. He married in 1838. The couple had a daughter but both mother and child died within days of each other. By the age of 25, Gough was unemployed, homeless, and a confirmed drunkard. In 1842 he attended a temperance meeting in Worcester, Massachusetts where he took a pledge to totally abstain from liquor. He began to tell his story to eager audiences and soon embarked on a career of lecturing against the evils of drink. During his career, Gough delivered some 9,600 lectures to more than nine million people in America, Canada, England, Scotland, and Ireland. Gough made three overseas tours and traveled extensively throughout the United States becoming the most sought-after temperance lecturer in the country. When he died in 1886, the New York Times wrote that he "was probably better known in this country and in Great Britain than any other public speaker." Mr. Gough was one of this country's most influential social reformers who helped to solve one of America's most pressing problems.

Temperance/ Platform Echoes by John Gough; published by Worthington & Co. 1886. Five hundred thrilling anecdotes and incidents, humorous stories, personal experiences and adventures, touching home scenes, and tales of tender pathos; 225 engravings; 639 pages in very nice condition; one illustration has come loose from the book and is there. Book measures 6 x 9

1870 Temperance Biography Glough Recollections

PLATFORM ECHOES John Glough Temperance AA History Alcoholics Anonymous

 antique, (1886), pre-Alcoholics Anonymous type book, authored by John B. Gough, who was the Bill Wilson of his era. This large book has 639 pages. The author was a recovering alcoholic, through working with other alcoholics and by applying the spiritual principles of Christianity. He was an internationally famed speaker on recovery from alcohol, and his following of Temperance crusaders held meetings and other methods of recovery remarkably similar to A.A. You will find many quotes from this book that make it obvious that A.A. founder Bill Wilson studied the early sobriety movements for ideas on his own fellowship. For example I noticed the phrases, "total abstinance", and "physically, morally and spiritually sick", etc, etc. This book is loaded with tragic stories of how alcoholism destroys lives and families, and just how widespread the curse of alcoholism was in the 19th century. Many of the stories date back to the early and middle 1800's; one chapter even went back to the Revolutionary War. There is an interesting chapter on "women's rights", and the book has 227 awesome illustrations and engravings, many of them full page, that bring the plight of alcoholism to life for the reader.