Times and Seasons

Times and Seasons

Six years of the church's own newspaper at Nauvoo, carrying more firsts than any other periodical in its history — and, in July 1844, the announcement of Joseph Smith's death.

What it is

Times and Seasons was the periodical of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at Nauvoo, Illinois, published from November 1839 until February 1846 — from the founding of the city to the eve of the exodus west. Joseph Smith was its nominal editor for part of that run.

For those six years it was the church's paper of record: doctrine, revelation, conference minutes, correspondence, obituaries, and the running argument with the church's Illinois neighbours that ended in the destruction of the city.

The firsts it carries

An unusual amount of what Latter-day Saints now take as settled first reached print in these pages.

• The Book of Abraham, published in instalments in 1842 — its first appearance anywhere, decades before it was canonised in the Pearl of Great Price.
• The Wentworth Letter, written in March 1842 to a Chicago newspaper editor who had asked for an account of the church. Its closing thirteen statements of belief became the Articles of Faith.
• Reports of Joseph Smith's Nauvoo discourses, including sermons that survive nowhere else in as full a form.
• The announcement of his death, in the issue following the killings at Carthage in June 1844.
• The church's own account of the Nauvoo Expositor, the suppressed newspaper whose destruction set the events of that June in motion.

What we hold

Six volumes covering 1839 to 1845 — 131 indexed items.