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 EARLY VIEWS OF LOUISIANA
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BRACKENRIDGE, H. M. VIEWS OF LOUISIANA; Together With a Journal of a Voyage Up the Missouri River, in 1811. Pittsburgh: Cramer, Spear and Eichbaum, 1814. 8vo. Contemporary tree sheep with morocco spine label. 304 pages. Cloth slipcase. Professionally rebacked, preserving original spine, some foxing and browning, mostly to pastedowns. Very good or better.
FIRST EDITION of Brackenridge's first book. Henry Marie Brackenridge (1786-1871) is less-known from his career as a lawyer, legislator and diplomat than he is for memorializing early nineteenth-century life in Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri in his Views of Louisiana. Bored with an unsuccessful practice of law in Baltimore, Brackenridge "found solace in the social life of the city, and particularly in its bookstores and libraries, . . . but the western territory soon lured him with its promise of greater opportunities" (DAB) and he moved to upper Louisiana in 1810. There, "his researches in natural history, geography, and Indian antiquities found expression in articles for the Missouri Gazette which attracted the notice of Thomas Jefferson. In 1811 he made a voyage up the Missouri with Manuel Lisa of the Missouri Fur Company, keeping a journal which was later used by Irving as a source for his Astoria (1836)" (Id.).
The articles for the Missouri Gazette, with added chapters on Louisiana and the journal of his voyage with Lisa, became Brackenridge's Views of Louisiana. "The section, Views of Louisiana, which comprises two-thirds of the entire volume, discusses discovery, settlement, climate, soil, rivers, resources, agriculture, towns, and Indians. The seventy-page 'Journal' is an excellent commentary on the fur trade of the Upper Mississippi Valley" (Clark, Travels In the Old South). Today, Views of Louisiana remains an invaluable first-hand account of early life on the American frontier by "an impartial and careful writer" (Id.). Clark, Travels In the Old South II, 136. Howes B688. Sabin 7176. BT000095.
Provenance: Book label of Jay Snider.
$3000
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