Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, The Cherokee Country, The Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws.
Bartram, William.
London: J. Johnson, 1792.
Price:
$5,000.00
About the item
First English Edition. Eight engraved plates (including frontispiece portait of Mico-Chlucco) and folding map. xxiv,520,[12]pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Contemporary calf, rebacked, spine gilt, retaining the original morocco lettering piece, marbled endpapers. Provenance: Frederick M. Gaige (bookplate). Howes B223, "b"; Sabin 3870; Clark I:197; Vail 849; Field 94; Coats, The Plant Hunters, pp.273-76; Reese, Federal Hundred 33 (ref).
Item #377047
First British edition of one of the classic accounts of southern natural history and exploration, with much on the southern Indian tribes. For the period, Bartram's work is unrivalled.
"William Bartram was born in natural history. His father, John Bartram, was a self-taught botanist and seedsman who became a critical supplier to many European collectors, and who founded the family gardens on the Schuylkill River outside of Philadelphia. Ultimately he was appointed American botanist to the King. William received a classical education, but struck out on his own and moved to North Carolina and Florida as a trader and planter. Unsuccessful at this, but a talented artist, he began to draw American plants and animals for [Benjamin] Franklin's friend and his father's patron, Peter Collinson ... Most of the book is based on Bartram's excursions in the South, especially Georgia, northern Florida, and the Carolinas from 1773 to 1777 ... [His Travels] is credited with influencing everyone from Coleridge to Thoreau, and Bartram became famous, as he remains today" (Reese).
Field writes that "Bartram wrote with all the enthusiasm and interest with which the fervent old Spanish friars and missionaries narrated the wonders of the new found world...he neglected nothing which would add to the common stock of human knowledge." Sabin adds that the work is "unequalled for the vivid picturesqueness of its descriptions of nature, scenery, and productions" (Sabin). The map illustrates the east coast of Florida from the St. Johns River to Cape Canaveral.
