CREVECOEUR (Michel-Guillaume-Jean de)]. Voyage dans la haute - Lot 22

CREVECOEUR (Michel-Guillaume-Jean de)]. Voyage dans la haute Pennsylvanie et dans l'État de New York, par un membre adoptif de la nation Onéida. À Paris, chez Maradan, an IX-1801. 3 volumes in-8, xxxi-(1)-427-(one blank) + xiii-(1)-434 + xii-409-(1) pp. 3 folding tables printed out of text, fawn root calf, spines cloisonné and fleuronné with green title-pieces and tomaison, filleted coupes, marbled edges; bindings a little rubbed with small tear at one head (period binding). FIRST EDITION. Illustrated with 11 copper-engraved plates (8 folding), including 3 maps. Joseph Sabin's bibliography includes only 10 plates. THE SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY OF A COUNTRY UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Fictitiously presented as a single voyage around 1790, this is in fact an amalgam of souvenirs from several excursions made at different dates in the states of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia and Connecticut. In this prolific work, Crèvecoeur presents the results of genuine field surveys, in the varied form of accounts, notes and commentaries. He offers realistic analyses of the western frontier, provides an overview of industry and commerce, recounts a visit to New York State's largest foundry, and paints poignant pictures of the harsh lives of farmers. He hints at the coming rush westward and the urban explosion that will take place on the debris of Indian society, which is constantly being pushed back, and devotes a quarter of the book to the Indians, evoking their customs, their social and political goals, their legends. A LITERARY WORK IN ITS OWN RIGHT. Crèvecoeur reconstructs or invents dialogues, and above all delivers inspired visions of nature in a pre-romantic tone, as in his magnificent painting of Niagara Falls. Provenance: Vaud businessman and politician Vincent Perdonnet (gilded bookplate on front boards and printed vignettes on versos of front boards). A stockbroker in Paris in 1792, Vincent Perdonnet (1768-1850) founded a trading house in Marseille, where he became consul of the Helvetic Republic in 1799. He played an important role in the Vaud Revolution (1798-1799), and returned to Switzerland in 1828, where he was elected Liberal deputy to the Vaud Grand Council.