Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard Roux de Rochelle - États-Unis d'Amérique - 1837

ROUX DE ROCHELLE (Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard). United States of America. Paris, Firmin Didot frères, 1837. 8vo, 400 pages, text in two columns, folding map and 96 steel-engraved plates hors texte, black half–binding with a smooth spine richly ornamented along its length with a romantic rocaille design of scrolling tendrils, rose garlands and birds, gilt fillets at the tail, boards of brown-mottled paper (binding from the period). Original edition. Born in Lons-le-Saunier, head of division at the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard Roux de Rochelle (1762–1849) served as Minister Plenipotentiary of France in Hamburg from 1826 to 1830, and then in Washington from 1830 to 1831, under the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1767–1845). A geographer and man of letters, he added this volume to the L’Univers pittoresque collection, history and description of all peoples, by Firmin Didot, two years after Tocqueville’s first Democracy in America (1805–1859). The text recounts the history of the United States from the earliest explorations and the founding of the English colonies to the 1830s, viewed by a diplomat who had firsthand knowledge of the country. The illustrations are the additional attraction of this work: a substantial series of plates devoted to Native Americans (hunting, fishing, war, funeral rites, wampum, petroglyphs), several derived from Theodore de Bry’s engravings (1528–1598) after drawings by John White at Roanoke (1585), and views of West Point, Philadelphia (City Hall, current Independence Hall), New York, the Hudson Palisades, Lake George, and Boston. Some fine crackles on the back, boards slightly rubbed, sporadic foxing, overall in good condition. (Sabin, 73516; Monaghan, French Travellers in the United States, 1272).

Estimate:£24.27

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