Voyage dans l'Interieur des États-Unis, a Bath, Winchester, dans la Vallée de Shenandoha, etc. etc. etc. pendant l'Été de 1791.
Paris: Cocheris, 1797.
Price: $600.00
About the item
First edition. (2), xvi, (2), 336 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Contemporary quarter leather over paste paper boards, French tips, flat spine decorated in gilt, red leather spine label, marbled endpapers. Joints rubbed, spine label chipped, some spotting and soiling to the text block, otherwise a near fine copy. Sabin 4022; Streeter II:829; Howes B225; Clark II:77.
Item #264671
Ferdinand-Marie Bayard de La Vingtrie (1763–c.1818) had pursued a military career in his native France, rising to the rank of lieutenant before leaving the army in 1788. Bayard was in his twenties when he made this journey to Virginia (the area is now in West Virginia). In Clark's words, “His purposes in traveling to Bath were to save his wife and child the perils of a summer in Baltimore, and to observe Americans in village and country rather than in towns in constant intercourse with Europe… Bayard's account affords a sympathetic, sentimental, leisurely picture of society at a forgotten watering place seldom visited by travelers. His social and intellectual acceptability and the length of his stay set his book apart from the customary tourist-guide gazetteer. His stated intention of delineating manners and customs is fulfilled.” After returning to France, he published “Voyage dans l’intérieur des États-Unis.”.
