Around the world: sketches of travel through many lands and over many seas
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1872. 8vo. xvi, [17]-455, [1] pp., plus 6 pages publisher’s advertisements. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. Complete with frontispiece and numerous text illustrations. Publisher’s blue cloth, covers with black border, title and author in gilt, rebacked; new endpapers, text leaves brittle, many nearly detached, some discoloration and chipping. Stamp of the Long Island Historical Society on the title. Item #15273
First American edition. Prime (1814-1891) was an American clergyman and journalist who undertook with his invalid wife (referred to in the preface as “the one who is making with [the writer] the voyage of life”) a year-long westward journey around the world, beginning and ending in New York, “mainly for the recovery of health, but also for the general purposes of travel and observation.” The work includes detailed descriptions of, and forthright commentary on, the places and people that they visited, including throughout America. For example, like other writers before and since, he gives his unfavorable opinion of San Francisco’s summer weather: “San Francisco is something to be proud of, but of one thing I should never boast, and that is of its climate. During the month of August we had not one day of genial or even moderately comfortable weather . . . the weather at that season of the year is so cold that ladies wear their furs and gentlemen go clad or armed with heavy overcoats.” The occasional illustrations are delicate and charming.
Price: $100.00