Rafinesque, C. S. | A rare and idiosyncratic self-published work

Rafinesque, C. S.

Number 1. Spring 1836. The American Nations; or, Outlines of A Natural History; of the Ancient and Modern Nations of North and South America. … First Number, or Volume: Generalities and Annals. Philadelphia: Published by C. S. Rafinesque, No. 110 North Tenth Street, Sold by the Principal Booksellers, and in London by O. Rich, in Paris by Meilhac & Baillere, 1836

8vo (203 x 123 mm). Uncut and largely unopened. Browned and foxed. Publisher's green printed wrappers; spine and extremities chipped.

The first part of Rafinesque's self-published account of American history that contains his account of Haitian history and the Haitian language, as well as of the Delaware people. The wrappers indicate that the work will run to six numbers, available for five dollars, and that the individual issues are sold for a dollar, although six copies can be purchased for five dollars. Only the first two parts were published.

French-born, Rafinesque lived most of his life in the United States. A brilliant polymath, he was never accepted by the scientific establishment of the day and was duped by Audubon into publishing descriptions of a number of fictitious species after accidently breaking a violin belonging to the ornithologist. Field expresses a common frustration with Rafinesque in his entry for the present work in Indian Bibliography: "This extraordinary mass of learning, hypothesis, and wretched moonings, is not without its large share of utility, if one had the patience to separate the veritable philological gold from the dross of conjecture. There seems to be in some minds every quality for obtaining vast stores of learning, patient investigation, rare scholarship, and admirable skill in research; but so little susceptible to the rigid control of logical selection, that their attainments and discoveries are almost useless. These volumes are largely made up of comparative vocabularies of Indian languages." Still, Field elsewhere recognized that Rafinesque was "a was man of much learning, insatiable real in pursuit of knowledge, and tireless industry, but he lived at period when ethnology had not crystallized into a science, and his reports of his own investigations have the appearance of crudeness and hypothesis. To class him with the mere speculator upon science and history, would be an act of injustice, as he was undoubtedly an original investigator."

A typically rare—and idiosyncratic—work by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque. The last copy of this first part cited in Rare Book Hub was in 1958 at Swann, while the second number is not recorded since a 1942 Parke-Bernet sale.

REFERENCES

Field 1256; Fitzpatrick 858; Pilling 3165; Sabin 67441