[Rarebooks] fa: EXTRACTS from the JOURNAL of MARSHAL SOULT [re. AMERICA] - Newburyport: 1817

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Happy New Year. Listed now, auction ending Sunday, January 10. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/zlvxr3y

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain

[Samuel Lorenzo Knapp:] Extracts from the Journal of Marshal Soult, Addressed to a Friend: How obtained and by whom translated is not a subject of enquiry. Newburyport: William B. Allen & Co., 1817. FIRST EDITION; 12mo (17.5) in recent 1/4 goatskin and period-style blue paper-covered boards, gilt-lettered spine label; 143 pp.

Purported to be a journal kept by Nicolas Jean de dieu Soult, one of Napoleon's Marshals of the Empire, as he traveled in Massachusetts, but in fact attributed to Knapp (1783-1838) a Boston-based lawyer, biographer and miscellaneous writer who is alleged to have concocted this fiction while cooling his heels in a Newburyport jail. Knapp apparently thought he was on to something, for the following year he published a similar work, Extracts of a Journal of Travels in North America by "Ali Bey", purporting to be an Eastern traveler's observations of Boston and Cambridge society. Despite its lack of authenticity, the Journal of Marshal Soult provides a colorful and fascinating glimpse of New England at the time, with observations on Boston, Salem, Newburyport, the "Essex Junto," Nathaniel Bowditch, John Lowell, etc.

Title-page with original owner's signature ("Robt. D. Freeman?") dated 1817, and old ink stamp of the Mercantile Library, Boston (no other library markings); leaves rather browned, as often with early American imprints, occasional small spots and light stains, otherwise clean and sound in a fresh and attractive modern binding.