Rare Nantucket map, first separate issued map of Nantucket (French edition) published in “Letters from an American Farmer. A fascinating outsider’s view of the people, culture and natural attractions of the new United States, as seen through the eyes of a French émigré, Michel-Guillaume-Saint-Jean de Crèvecoeur. The work includes folding maps of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.
Full conservation frame with Museum glass and fabbric Mat
After two introductory chapters describing “the situation, feelings, and pleasures, of an American farmer” and addressing the question “What is an American[?],” more than one third of the work focuses on the “manners, customers, policy, and trade, of the inhabitants” of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Howes (describing the London edition) calls it a “description of American life of great influence in attracting European immigration in the post-revolutionary period. As literature unexcelled by any American work of the eighteenth century.” This book was wildly popular in Europe due to the thirst for information on America.
The original Nantucket map is 9.75”h x 12.75”w, with a legend in the text keyed to 32 numbered locations, including natural features and land “tracks” (tracts Letters was first published in London in 1782). The present example is “a new edition, with an accurate index.” Howes describes only the London 1st. The work was sufficiently popular to merit several re-printings and translation into French as well as Dutch and German.
Table of descriptives;
1)Coatue 9) Oyster Beds 17) Narrow Lake 25) North Pond
2) Brant Point 10) Coskata Fields 18) Quaise District 26) Tuckernuck Island
3) Eel Point 11) District of Squam 19) Sheep Pasture 27) South dunes
4) Smith Point 12) Long Pond 20) Polpis District 28) Madaket Harbor
5) Eel Creek 13) Sheep Pond 21) Houses of Fishermen 29) High dunes
6) Siasconset 14) Miacomet Pond 22) North Pond 30) Mountains of sand
7) Sand Point 15) Shoal water 23) Coskata pond 31) Meadows
8) Town, Docks and shops 16) Tetoukemah lots 24) East pond 32) Cape Tomine
Old Charts of New England www.oldcharts.com Credit: Avalon Project, BRM Buehler, Gutenberg.
- Item #: 009999