Over his long career, the London-based bookseller and author John Dunton arranged for printing about 600 works. His periodical, The Athenian Mercury (1691-97) pioneered the device of answering (anonymous) questions from readers.^

During an eight-month visit to New England in 1686, Dunton arranged for the printing of sermons delivered at James Morgan’s hanging. Puritan minister Increase Mather delivered one of the sermons on March 11, 1686. Dunton noted, “I made him {Brunning} my Partner in printing Mr. Mather’s sermon, preach’d at the Execution of Morgan.”^ A second impression of Increase Mather’s sermon, which differed only in exchanging Brunning’s name for Dunton’s in the imprint, was also published in 1686 in a collection that included Cotton Mather’s “Call of the Gospel” and Joshua Moodey’s “Exhortation to a condemned malefactor.” Increase Mather’s preface, “To the Reader,” which is dated March 26, 1686, makes reference to the other two sermons included in the book. Whether the first impression included these two sermons is not clear.^ ^ ^ In 1687, Richard Pierce in Boston printed a second edition of the three Morgan execution sermons. Dunton apparently had nothing to do with that printing.

Back in London in 1691, Dunton returned to execution literature. He appended Increase Mather’s sermon at James Morgan’s hanging to a greatly sensationalized edition of Cotton Mather’s book, Wonders of the Invisible World. Dunton titled the new book, The Wonders of free-grace, or, a compleat history of all the remarkable penitents that have been executed at Tyburn and elsewhere for these last thirty years. Dunton republished that work in an edited form in London in several editions in 1692 and 1693.^