Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans l état de New York
Author: Crevecoeur, Michel Guillaume Jean de (1735-1813)
Year: 1801 (IX)
Publisher: Chez Maradan
Place: Paris
Description:
3 volumes. xii+427 pages with frontispiece portrait, 3 plates (one folding) and folding map; xiv+454 pages with two folding plate and two folding maps; xii+409+[errata] with 4 folding tables and 1 folding plate. Small octavo (7 3/4" x 5") bound in original half leather with brown label in gilt lettering over marbled boards. (Howes C884. Sabin 17501. Field 388. Monaghan 503.) First edition.
This work by the author had been written in his declining years. In a biography of his great-grandfather the author alleges in his introduction that the Voyage is a manuscript found in a shipwreck-and even whole chapters of which are either lost or water-soaked beyond legibility, and that he is the translator of this work. Written with greater care than his Letters, the work, except for several fanciful chapters, offers very real interest and authenticity. The numerous notes in the three volumes have appreciable interest. In the Voyage he is still writing of an agrarian Utopia. Pastoral descriptions abound-farmlands, irrigation projects, cattle, salt-feeding, etc, are all part of parcel of the subject-matter (as they were in the famous Letters)-but in Creavecoeur's last work one reads of a landed gentry who have impressive libraries and private chamber music ensembles-a far cry from the humble man of homespun tastes characteristic of the Letters.
Condition:
Map at back fold of volume two detached, book-plates to front end papers, inner hinge cracked, corners rubbed and bumped else about very good. English edition: Corners bumped, extremities gently rubbed, page ends soiled. Jacket price clipped, wrapper rubbed else a very good copy in like jacket.
