THE JOURNALS OF MADAM KNIGHT, AND REV. MR. BUCKINGHAM. FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS, WRITTEN IN 1704 & 1710.

The scarce first printing of the journal of Sarah Kemble Knight (1666–1727) describing a journey taken from Boston to New York in 1704. George Parker Winship (in the introduction to the 1920 edition of Knight's journal) remarked that Mrs. Knight's journal offered "the truest picture left to us of provincial New England." Sarah Knight was a significant colonial Boston businesswoman whose various occupations included running a boarding house, a shop, tavern, and inn, developing real estate, and teaching (including such illustrious pupils as Ben Franklin and the Mather family - indeed, Increase Mather officiated her daughter's wedding). Knight's charming travel journal, preserved by her descendants since 1704 but not published until this printing in 1825, describes a five-month journey taken alone on horseback and is considered one of the most authentic pictures of colonial New England at the turn of the 18th century. The journal itself had been all but destroyed by 1858, and published editions remain the only example of Knight's writing (which is by all accounts considered excellent). "During the pauses of her horseback journey, she kept a journal, which records events in a most amusing fashion and comments entertainingly upon the rough roads, river crossings, intolerable inns, and the manners of speech of the inland rustics" - THE OXFORD COMPANION to AMERICAN LITERATURE. "Critics have placed her journal in the picaresque tradition, characterized by episodes of travel, comments on morals and manners, and the use of comedy. Knight's figurative language has been compared positively with the humor of Mark Twain. One commentator argued that Sarah Knight wrote with Homer's Odyssey in mind; by treating her own journey in mock heroic fashion and portraying herself as an urbane Bostonian in rural Connecticut she represents the Greek among the barbarians.In general, commentators have noted that the journal reveals a mind characterized by wit, intelligence, and refreshing independence" - ANB. In addition to Knight's journal, this 1825 edition presents extracts from the diaries of Reverend John Buckingham, a Hartford minister who joined two expeditions against Canada in Queen Anne's War as chaplain to Connecticut troops. His journal begins with the naval action against Port Royal and continues on to describe the land expedition against Crown Point the following year, which involved many skirmishes both alongside and against the indigenous people of what is now northeastern New York. This first edition is rather scarce in the trade – the last copy recorded at auction was sold by Sotheby's in 1971. HOWES K218, "aa." SABIN 38124. SHAW & SHOEMAKER 21135. ANB 12, pp.818-19. "Knight, Sarah Kemble" in The Oxford Companion to American Literature, ed. James D. Hart (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995), p.351. Modern half calf and marbled boards, spine gilt with raised bands, leather label. Light tanning. Lower outer corner of first eleven leaves raggedly torn (not affecting text). Occasional soiling and light foxing. Leaf with pp.125-126 with a two-inch horizontal tear (no loss of text). Good plus.…