WRIGHT (Frances). Voyage aux États-Unis d'Amérique, ou Obser - Lot 60

WRIGHT (Frances). Voyage aux États-Unis d'Amérique, ou Observations sur la société, les moeurs, les usages et le gouvernement de ce pays, recueillies en 1818, 1819 et 1820. À Paris, chez Béchet aîné, Arthus Bertrand, 1822. 2 volumes in-8, xiv-351-(one blank) + vi-359-(one blank) pp. half-brown basane with corners, spines decorated with gilt fillets and fleurons with brown and green title-pieces and tomaison; binding rubbed with missing spine-pieces and worn corners, split ends (period binding). FIRST EDITION OF THE FRENCH TRANSLATION, by Jacques-Théodore Parisot, of this work originally published in English in London in 1821. The translator, a former officer in the First Empire, placed a dedication to the Marquis de La Fayette at the head of the book. An account of a journey that took Frances Wright from New York to Philadelphia at Joseph Bonaparte's house, then north on the Hudson River to West Point and Albany, and on to Canada at Montreal via Niagara Falls and Lake Erie. The return journey was via Lake Champlain to Washington. Frances Wright accompanies her observations with a wealth of remarks on history, education, religion, politics, Indians and more. A FEMINIST AND ABOLITIONIST SOCIAL REFORMER, FRIEND OF LA FAYETTE, FRANCES WRIGHT (1795-1852) came from a wealthy Scottish family sympathetic to the French Revolution. Orphaned, she lived for a time with an uncle, a professor of philosophy, with whom she read widely, adopted a system of thought inspired by Epicurean materialism, and began to publish works of literature. She traveled to North America with her sister from 1818 to 1820, from which she wrote the present account, which met with great success and was translated into several languages. It was on the occasion of this publication that she befriended the Marquis de La Fayette, who praised her book to Thomas Jefferson: "The Elder Miss Wright did for the first time give me the pleasure to read the praise of America from an English pen" (letter, June 1, 1822). In 1824, she accompanied him on his triumphant tour of the United States, where she met such luminaries as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who approved of his plan to buy, educate and emancipate slaves. She decided to stay in America, and indeed founded an autonomous multi-racial community in Nashoba, Tennessee, with the moral backing of La Fayette and philosopher and politician Robert Dale Owen (son of the socialist philosopher). It was a failure, however, both economically and in terms of reputation, as the white steward of the estate was living with a black former slave, which aroused disapproval in the society of the time - having sunk a large part of her fortune into the venture, Frances Wight then helped the blacks of Nashoba to settle in Haiti. In 1828, she became particularly attached to Robert Dale Owen, following him to his Utopian community in New Harmony, Indiana, and then to New York, where she became the first woman to publish a periodical in the United States. In her writings and lectures, she professed radical ideas on the status of women (equality of the sexes, the right to divorce and birth control), on education (free and public), on blacks (emancipation and education), and so on. In 1830, she married a French doctor she had met in New Harmony, Guillaume d'Arusmont (the Marquis de La Fayette was a witness at their wedding), and lived with him in Paris until 1835, but they divorced in 1850. She eventually settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, but made a few more trips to France. RARE, absent from BnF collections.