Travels of William Bartram - Softcover

Bartram, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0486200132 ISBN 13: 9780486200132

Publisher: Dover Publications, 1955

Synopsis

This is the first inexpensive, illustrated edition of one of the most delightful books of the 18th century. A major source work in American geography, anthropology, and natural history, it contains accurate and entertaining descriptions of the area of the New World now embraced by Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.
From 1773 to 1778, William Bartram, a trained naturalist, traveled through southern North America, noting the characteristics of almost everything he encountered: the rivers of Florida, the groves of wild oranges, the swamps and lagoons, the fish, the tropical snakes and reptiles, the land and aquatic birds, the Cherokee Indians' march toward civilization, the festivals of the Seminole, the customs of the Creeks. This material now offers a wealth of first-hand information that is not available elsewhere.
And it offers it in a format that still makes for exciting reading. A classic not only of natural science and observation, Bartram's account also served as a source for Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and "Ancient Mariner" and was held in high esteem as literature by Wordsworth, Carlyle, and Emerson.

About this title

About the Author

William Bartram (1739-1823) is renowned as one of the first early American naturalists. Francis Harper (1886-1972) was a noted field biologist and the author of many books, including "Okefinokee Album" (Georgia).

Review

It is the visionary quality which gives Bartram's writing its special radiance: the passionate, wonder-struck, daring, and very personal scientism, the repeated acts of rapt, total absorption.

(James Dickey)

This is much more than a new edition of The Travels; it is really two books in one. . . . Harper has traveled the routes followed by John Bartram in the 1760's and William in the 1770's. The study is a labor of love, but also a labor of great scholarly value . . . Superb [and] indispensable.

(American Quarterly)

In the southeastern forests and savannahs, Bartram experienced a wild that we can no longer know in our mechanized and urbanized present. Our sense of environmental loss imparts an elegiac fascination to his evocative and rapturous descriptions.

(New Republic)

Edition details

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Publication date: 1955
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0486200132
• ISBN 13: 9780486200132
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448