[Rarebooks] fa: ADAM HODGSON - LETTERS FROM NORTH AMERICA 1824 - INSCRIBED

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, February 22. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/qgkqdqn

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


Adam Hodgson: Letters from North America, Written During a Tour in the United States and Canada. London: Hurst, Robinson & Co., 1824. First edition thus. Two volumes, 8vo, bound in full morocco, bordered and lettered in gilt; [2], xv, [1], 405 pp.; [2], iv, 473 pp.; frontispiece and folding plan, woodcut in-text illustrations. Howes H-560; Sabin 32358.

PRESENTATION COPY inscribed in the year of publication by Hodgson on the front free-endpaper: "Miss Pennington— With the kind regards of her affectionate friend The Author..." Bound without the half-titles, but with the errata slips and the "Postscript" (pp. [461]-473) which is not always present. An unauthorized version of Hodgson's letters, imperfect, incomplete, and without the maps, had been published in New York the year before. During the course of sixteenth months from 1819-21, Hodgson "travelled nearly 8000 miles, comprehending in my route, the States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Upper and Lower Canada." His account contains much on the Indian tribes he encountered (Natchez, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee) and includes visits to Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, the Missionary Settlement of Elliot in the Choctaw Nation, and observations on slavery, religion, agriculture, emigration, etc. etc.

Bindings with modest rubbing and wear to the corners; offsetting to and from the plates; occasional light scattered toning and spotting to the text; one leaf with a long horizontal tear; pencilled notations by a previous owner to the front (blank) flyleaf, with a few (erasable) pencilled tick-marks in the margins; otherwise quite clean and sound, firmly bound.