Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee country, the extensive territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the country of the Chactaws…
Philadelphia: Printed by James & Johnson, 1791. First edition.
Octavo in 4s (7 3/8” x 4 5/8”, 189mm x 118mm): 8 binder’s blanks, π2(–π1) a4 b-d4 e2(–e2) B-3P4 3Q4 3R-3U4 3X2 (3X2 blank), 8 binder’s blanks [$1 signed]. 280 leaves, pp. [2] (title, copyright), i-iii (dedication, blank, contents) iv-xxxiv, 1 2-522, 2 blanks. [=xxxvi, 522, ii] With two engraved plates.
Bound in late half red morocco over maroon cloth (rebacked, with the original backstrip laid down). Gilt fillet at the edges of the morocco. On the spine, four raised bands. In the panels, double blind fillets top-and-bottom. Title gilt to the second panel. Pink end-papers. All edges of the text-block speckled red. With six leaves of blue-lined paper blind-stamped with a depiction of the U.S. Capitol and the legend congress at the front and back.
Rebacked (with the original backstrip laid down). Some scuffs to the extremities. Cloth lifting a little on both boards. Internally, moderately but evenly tanned throughout. Pen trials on the title-page. Ink signature of “Wm. Green. 1865.” on the dedication. Faint pencil sidelining throughout. Lacking the engraved frontispiece, folding map and five plates.
William Bartram (1729–1823) was born in Philadelphia, son of the naturalist John Bartram whom Linnaeus so admired. Like his father, William was unsatisfied to observe in his backyard; instead he traveled extensively in the Southeast (from 1773), leaving some of the earliest and most vivid descriptions of that part of the country. His was the great curiosity of the savant, not limiting himself to the flora or fauna, terrain or cultures he encountered, but weaving all into a tapestry of the region. He was the first naturalist properly to explore the thickly forested and swampy terrain of Florida, and it is this for which his writing is now most prized.
Nearly as important as the work’s scientific pedigree is its influence on literature. Coleridge and Wordsworth certainly read it; Wordsworth cites it explicitly in a note to his poem “Ruth” (Lyrical Ballads (1800) II.106). The novelty of the country and its inhabitants surely sparked great curiosity, but it is surely the immediacy and rhapsody of Bartram’s prose that so engaged the Romantic poets.
Stevens Catalogue of Rare Books Relating to America 1617, Howes B 223, Sabin 3870, Field 94.
Item #6JLR0093
Price: $8,200