"A FASCINATING PICTURE OF THE POST-REVOLUTIONARY NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES": DWIGHT'S FOUR-VOLUME TRAVELS IN NEW YORK AND NEW ENGLAND, 1823

DWIGHT, Timothy. Travels; in New-England and New-York. London: William Baynes and Son, Ogle, Duncan and Co., 1823. Four volumes. Octavo, later straight-grain blue-grey calf gilt, marbled edges. $550.

First English edition of this collection of Dwight's travel writings, "an astonishingly varied collection of descriptions of natural scenery, agricultural, political, religious, and social conditions, including historical, biographical, and statistical information… interlarded with shrewd practical comments" (DAB), with frontispiece portrait and three folding maps.

A child prodigy, Dwight entered Yale College at 13. His rigorous studies, coupled with a severe diet, soon led to a physical collapse. To recover, he traveled extensively throughout New England and New York and continued to do so after regaining his health. He became president of Yale in 1795 and became quite well-known through his numerous writings on religious and moral issues. Of all his works, Travels is his "most important… will derive additional value from time" (Sabin 21559). Composed as a series of letters to a benighted Englishman, his perceptive account describes in detail a wilderness transformed by pious, but "restless" men. "The full range of Dwight's restless intellectual curiosity comes into view in his posthumously published Travels in New England and New York (1821-1822), based on notes taken during his summer journeys through New England and New York, giving at once a fascinating picture of the post-revolutionary northeastern United States and an attractive picture of Dwight the traveler, on holiday from his responsibilities as president of Yale and endlessly intrigued with the new social order he himself had done so much to bring into existence" (ANB). The first edition was published in Connecticut in 1821-22. Sabin 21559. Howes D612. BAL 5075. Bookplates.

Offsetting from plates to title pages, text fine; mild rubbing to extremities of evenly toned spines. A handsomely bound set.