Washington Irving; A. Sobry (transl.) - Voyage dans les prairies à l'ouest des États-Unis - 1835

IRVING (Washington). A Tour on the Prairies in the West of the United States. Paris, Librairie de Fournier jeune, 1835. 8vo, 306 pages, half brown morocco, spine with raised bands ornamented with gilded pearl lines, crowned gilt monogram at the tail, marbled paper boards (binding of the period).

First French edition.

Translation by Mademoiselle Adèle Sobry, already the translator of The Tales of the Alhambra, published in the year of the English original (A Tour on the Prairies, London, John Murray, 1835) and forming the first volume of Irving’s Miscellanies at Fournier jeune. After returning to New York in 1832 following seventeen years in Europe, Washington Irving (1783-1859) joined the expedition of Commissioner Henry Leavitt Ellsworth (1791-1858), charged with inspecting the lands allotted to relocated tribes; the account of this month-long ride beyond Fort Gibson, in present-day Oklahoma, stands among the early literary texts devoted to the American West and the Frontier.

In Irving, his companions are set forth: the commissioner, “the universal virtuoso” Charles Joseph Latrobe (1801-1875), “the adventure lover,” the young Count Albert de Pourtalès (1812-1861), the Creole Antoine, “Gil Blas of the frontiers,” and the Franco-Osage guide Pierre Beatte. There are encounters with the agency of Colonel Auguste Pierre Chouteau (1786-1838), the Osages, Cricks (Creeks), Delawares and Pawnees, missionary Requa on the Neosho, the crossing of the Arkansas, the Canadian and the Red River. Hunts for buffalo, wild turkeys and bears, capture of wild horses by lariat, the “republic of prairie dogs,” Lynch Law, storms and hungry camps compose a precise tableau of frontier rovers’ life.

Provenance: crowned gold monogram (county crown, interlaced initials) at the tail of the spine, unidentified.

Binding slightly rubbed, pencil catalog number at the head of the title, a pale halo in the upper corner of the first twenty leaves with a tiny nibblemish at that spot on six leaves, other minor defects.