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Author: [Blane, William N.]
Title: An excursion through the United States and Canada during the years 1822-23. By an English Gentleman
Place Published: London
Publisher:Printed for Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy
Date Published: 1824
Description:

[4], 511 pp.; errata slip. With folding maps including the frontispiece, which is hand-colored in outline; folding table. ((8vo) 21.2x12.5 cm. (8½x5"), period have calf & marbled boards, rebacked in leather. First Edition.

Blane visited Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois among other areas. The folding frontispiece map, "United States of America, Compiled from the latest & best authorities," is by John Melish, an English publication of his 1820 map. It has some light offsetting and a short tear into the Atlantic Ocean. About the book, Clark, Travels in the Old South, notes: "The account is one of the least opinionated of any written by English visitors for a decade or more, and may be compared in this respect to Hodgson. Although exhibiting a definite antislavery bias, Blane was open-minded on most matters. He adjusted himself to frontier inconveniences, and showed an awareness of rapidly improving conditions in the newer population areas. He criticized his own countrymen for their prejudiced and unfair accounts of American life, but noted evidence of a changing attitude. He concluded that the frontier was not a place where immigrant Englishmen would be happier, but recommended any part of America for the poor Irish." Clark II, 184; Howes B521; Sabin 5872.

Spine rubbed; a little darkening/offset within; very good, with armorial bookplate of Ellis Wade, M.A.