Willis, N(athaniel) P(arker)
Pencillings by the way. Second edition.
London, John Macrone 1836.
Full Description
8vo. 3 vols. xxiv + 308pp, iv pp publisher’s adverts; xi + (1) + 312pp; xii + 333 + (1)pp. Original boards, with publisher’s printed labels on spines. No ownership inscription but William St.Clair’s copy.
Second edition of one of the best-known published works by the American travel writer Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867). The first edition had been published in 1835, and for this second edition Willis supplies a brief additional preface and adds dates to the thirty-two letters of his from which this book is made up. The letters were written from various places in Europe in 1833-4 as articles for the US periodical, the New York Mirror. The primary interest of the book for its recent owner, William St.Clair, will have been Willis’s letters describing his travels in Greece and Turkey, which occupy much of the second volume and the opening section of the third volume, although the latter part of the third volume, describing Willis’s encounters with contemporary celebrities in England and Scotland, would have been popular with his readers at the time and retain significance today.