Lot 130
  • 130

Lewis, Meriwether, and William Clark

Estimate
8,000 - 12,000 USD
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Description

  • History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, to the Sources of the Missouri, thence across the Rocky Mountains and down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. Philadelphia and New York: Bradford and Inskeep, 1814
  • paper, ink, leather
2 volumes, 8vo (8 3/8 x 5 1/8 in.; 213 x 130 mm). Large folding map, 5 maps and charts; some foxing throughout and occasional offsetting, occasional closed tears to margins, not affecting text, folding map detached and torn, but complete, some minor loss to margins of two plates (vol. 1), not affecting images, vol. 2 lacking title and first page of Contents (2 leaves in total). Contemporary brown calf, red morocco labels with gilt text and double rules to spines; boards of vol. 2 detached but present, inelegantly repaired with early brown paper.

Literature

Church 1309; Field 928; Graff 2477; Grolier American 100, 30; Howes L317; Printing & the Mind of Man 272; Tweney 89, 44; Sabin 40828; Shaw & Shoemaker 31924; Streeter Sale 1777; Streeter, Americana Beginnings, 52; Wagner-Camp 13:1

Catalogue Note

FIRST EDITION of the "definitive account of the most important exploration of the North American continent" (Wagner-Camp). A cornerstone of Western Americana. The book describes the Government-backed expedition to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase undertaken from 1804 to 1806 by ascending the Missouri to its source, crossing the Rocky Mountains, and reaching the Pacific Ocean. In total, the expedition covered some eight thousand miles in slightly more than twenty-eight months. Lewis and Clark brought back the first reliable information about much of the area they traversed, made contact with the Indian inhabitants as a prelude to the expansion of the fur trade, and advanced by a quantum leap the geographical knowledge of the continent. This official account of the expedition is as much a landmark in Americana as the trip itself. The narrative has been reprinted many times and remains a perennial American bestseller. The observations in the text make it an essential work of American natural history, ethnography and science. It is the first great U.S. government expedition and the first book on the Rocky Mountain West.