Two volumes, 8vo. [iv], [XX], [lacking 1-24, primer and prayers], 104 pages and [52] pages. Contemporary pale yellow wrappers, worn along spines; housed in a custom gilt-lettered morocco and cloth box. First few signatures of history separating; foxing throughout.

Ivan Veniaminov (1797-1879) was one of the great luminaries of Russian America. Possessing remarkable intellectual, linguistic, and practical skills, the young married priest volunteered in 1823 to go to Alaska as a missionary. Settling with his wife and family in Unalaska, he built a church and a school and began his lifelong task of studying the native languages of the region. With the help of the Aleut chief Ivan Pan'kov, Veniaminov invented an alphabet for the Unangan language and then used it to compose grammars and translate the Gospel of St. Matthew.

Travelling though the Aleutian Islands, Veniaminov collected a great deal of ethnographic and scientific material which would result in further publications in the Aleut and Tlingit languages and his Notes on the Unalaska District.

After his transfer to New Archangel (Sitka) in 1834, he paid a pastoral visit to Fort Ross and was warmly received by the Franciscan fathers at their missions in Northern California. While on a trip to St. Petersburg in 1839 to plead for support for the church in Alaska, he learned of his wife's death. At first reluctant to return to America, Veniaminov in 1840 was made bishop of the newly created diocese of Kamchatka, the Kurile Islands, and the Aleutians, which he administered from New Archangel, and given the monastic name Innokentii (Innocent).

Revered as a religious leader throughout Russia, Innokentii was elected Metropolitan of Moscow in 1868. From here he supervised the Orthodox Missionary Society which continued its work in Alaska until the 1917 Revolution.

In 1979 Innokentii was proclaimed a saint by the Orthodox Church in America.