Voyage dans l'Amérique septentrionale, ou description des pays arrosés par le Mississipi, l'Ohio, le Missouri et autres rivières affluentes; observations exactes sure le cours et les sondes de ces rivières; sur les villes, villages, hameaux et fermes de cette partie du Nouveau-Monde; suivi de remarques philosophiques, politiques, militaires et commerciales; et d'un projet de lignes frontières et de limites générales. Avec un atlas de 36 cartes, plans, vues et figures. Par feu le Général Collot, Ex-Gouverneur de la Guadeloupe
THE STETSON–SIEBERT–McKINNEY SET
Two text-volumes and an atlas-volume.[1] Paris: Imprimerie de Decourchant for Arthus Betrand, 1826 (1804–1805). First edition.
Text: octavo (7 13/16” x 5”, 198mm x 127mm).
Vol. I: π4 2π8 1-268 [$2 signed]. 220 leaves, pp. [4] (half-title, advertisement for Duperrey, title, blank) i ii-iv 2i 2ii-viij 1 2-8 3i 3ii-vi [2] (commission, blank) 9 10-416. [≈xxxii, 408]
Vol. II: π2 1-268 276 [$2 signed; –272]. 216 leaves, pp. [4] (half-title, imprint, title, blank) 1 2-427 [1] (blank).
Atlas: folio (13 9/16” x 10 ½”, 346mm x 267mm): binder’s blank, π-2π2, binder’s blank. 4 leaves, pp. [8] (French title, imprint, contents, blank, English title, imprint, contents, blank). With 36 engravings: 11 plates and 25 maps, of which 10 are folding and 1 double-page.
Text volumes bound in contemporary half calf over marbled boards. On the spines, four raised bands. Author and title gilt to the second panel, number gilt to the fourth. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block sprinkled red. Burnt sienna silk marking ribbons. Presented in slip-case with two chemises. Atlas volume bound in quarter vellum over marbled paper boards. On the spine, a red sheep label with author and title gilt, and an orange sheep label with “ATLAS” gilt. Green silk marking ribbon.
Text volumes rubbed with some wear along the edges, and some loss at the heads. The odd spot of foxing, and a very mild even tanning throughout. Well-margined, with preserved deckles and témoins. Leaves 255-6 and 265-6 in vol. II are unopened. Atlas volume soiled, with some rubbing and wear at the edges. Folding maps with splits at the folds, and strengthening to the stubs. Signed bookplate of Bruce McKinney to the chemise of the first volume of the text.
General Georges Henri Victor Collot (1750–1805) got his first taste of America serving under Maréchal de Rochambeau (as a lieutenant-colonel) during the Revolutionary War from May 1780, and then again 1789–1790. His experience of the New World led him to be sent by the French Revolutionary government to be governor of Guadeloupe, whence after great dissent and internecine strife he left, more or less as a prisoner, for the United States in 1796. There, with obvious mission of espionage (and thus tailed by Zebulon Pike), he traveled the Ohio River as far as the Mississippi. Since France had ceded Louisiana to the Spanish at the end of the Seven Years’ War — principally to keep it from the British — Collot’s task was to assess the extent to which Spain had militarized the region as the French considered retaking the territory (which it would do in 1800–1801, mostly to relieve the Spanish of the financial and political burdens of interacting with the Americans).
Collot was arrested and released by Pike before being arrested and incarcerated by the Spanish at New Orleans for more than four years, which gave him ample opportunity to draft the present work. He was allowed to leave for France in 1801, and worked on the Voyage through 1804, when printing began, and his death in May of 1805. The printed sheets sat for two decades before being published by Arthus Bertrand in French (300 copies) and in English (100); those that remained were pulped.[2] Thus the present work straddles three phases of (greater) Louisiana: its time as Spanish Luisiana (from 1763), its brief return to Napoleon in 1800 and finally its sale to the United States in 1803. By the time it was published, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois and Missouri had been admitted as states, fundamentally transforming the United States from a coastal country to one that would reach inland before spreading to the Pacific.
The text, therefore, is valuable as a historical account of the frontier period of the American Midwest in the decades following the Revolution, with a particular strength in its record of Native American people and territories. The atlas, engraved by Tardieu, on the other hand, is an essential and valuable cartographic and pictorial account of an under-surveyed part of the country; Collot’s three-sheet map of the Ohio is rightly celebrated, and his pictorial records of forts (Erie, Niagara, Natchez, New Madrid and Baton Rouge) are unsurpassed. For the collector of Midwest material, Collot is the cornerstone.
It should come as no surprise that the atlas volume was owned by John B. Stetson (1830–1906), best known as the inventor of the cowboy hat but also a major philanthropist whose legacy is memorialized at Temple University in Philadelphia as well as Stetson University, the oldest private university in Florida. He was a gentleman-explorer, going as far as Colorado via Illinois and Missouri, whence doubtless his interest in Collot’s atlas (it is curious that the atlas-volume has both English and French titles and contents). The set — including the text — was lot 207 in the 15 April 1953 Parke-Bernet sale of his (late) son John Jr. and his widow Ruby.
In that same year, Henry Stevens sold the set to Dr. Frank T. Siebert (1912–1997). Siebert was one of the greatest twentieth-century book-collectors, especially in the field of Americana and more particularly Native American material (his sale at Sotheby’s New York, 28 October 1999, in which the present volume was lot 819: $107,000). Siebert was apparently unhappy with the text volumes (the catalogue of his sale calls Stetson’s “imperfect”), and bought the present pair from Maggs.
The purchaser at the Siebert sale (which noted that a complete set had not been sold since the Streeter sale) was Bruce McKinney (his sale, 2 December 2010 Bonham’s New York “The American Experience,” lot 150). McKinney founded the Americana Exchange, now Rare Book Hub, the central database of book auction records. His own formidable collection of books (still growing) has been dispersed at several landmark sales.
Howes C 601 (“d” (“very rare books, obtainable only with great difficulty”)); Sabin 14460; Streeter sale III:1789; Wagner-Camp 31a:1, 31a:1a; Wheat, Transmississippi West 236.
[1] The atlas volume also contains the English title-page and contents: A Journey in North America, containing a survey Of the Countries watered by the Mississipi, Ohio, Missouri, and other affluing rivers; with exact observations on the course and soundings of these rivers, and on the towns, villages, hamlets and farms of that part of the New-World; followed By philosophical, political, military and commercial Remarks and by a projected line of frontiers and general limits; illustrated by 36 maps, plans, views and divers cuts; By Victor Collot, Late General in the French service, Governor of Guadeloupe.
[2] Rich, Bibliotheca Americana Nova 2:185.
Item #JLR0807
Price: $275,000