[Rarebooks] fa: M. DE PAGES - TRAVELS ROUND THE WORLD - Philadelphia: 1801 (EARLY ACCOUNT OF TEXAS)

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, April 15. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/y7t53ywm

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[Pierre Marie François vicomte de Pages]: Travels round the World, performed by Sea and Land, in the Years 1767, 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, by M. de Pages, captain in the French Navy, etc.  Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Joseph & James Crukshank, no. 87, High-Street, 1801. First edition thus; 12mo (14.5 cm) in partial early/original plain boards (front board and spine renewed); 108 pp. 

Browning to the leaves, a few small spots and touches of soiling, first 4-5 leaves with some damp-staining to the gutter, a few page corners bumped, else sound, firmly bound. Verso of title-page with an inscription by the original owner: “I. Niblock’s Book, Bot[sic] in the year 1801 March.” Additional signature and penciled note on the rear (blank) endpapers.

An abridgment of de Pages’ Voyages autour du monde, first published in Paris in 1782, an account of a journey around the world which began with his crossing much of what is now Texas. The present work includes his travels from New Orleans, via the Mississippi and the Red River, to Natchitoches (“the air of the place is contaminated...by the horrid stench arising from the urine and excrement of the alligator”) and Adaes, then across Texas (with accounts of San Antonio, the Trinity and Guadalupe rivers and Rio Grande, etc.) and on into Mexico. The English translation of Pagès work, first published in London in 1791, "is perhaps the oldest description of Texas in an English-language book" (TSHA). Of additional interest is the imprint of Joseph & James Crukshank of Philadelphia. Joseph Crukshank, in particular, was an important figure in colonial and early post-colonial book publishing. A Quaker and abolitionist, he published the first American edition of Poems on Various Subjects by the former slave Phillis Wheatley (1786); he also published Challoner’s Garden of the Soul (1774), believed to be the first Catholic prayer book issued in America. Quite scarce: OCLC locates only three copies held by institutions (Yale, Cornell, and, fittingly, the University of Texas at Arlington).