LETTRES D'UN CULTIVATEUR AMERICAIN ADDRESSEES A WM. S... ON ESQR. DEPUIS L'ANNEE 1770, JUSQU'EN 1786. PAR M. ST. JOHN DE CREVE COEUR, TRADUITES DE L'ANGLOIS. KEEN FEELINGS INSPIRE RESETLESS THOUGHTS

Paris: Chez Cuchet Libraire, Rue det Hotel Serpente, 1787. Three volumes: xxxii, 478, [2- Table], [2 blanks] [plus three plates (including frontis) and one folding map] ; [2], 438, [6] [with three folding maps]; [2], 592 pp [one folding map, one folding chart]. Contemporary calf, gilt spine rules and morocco titles [spine labels for volumes 1 and 2 were incorrectly switched], marbled endpapers. The morocco spine labels for volumes 1 and 2 have been Minor scattered foxing, owner bookplate on front pastedowns, Very Good.

"Best French edition and most compete of all editions" [Howes]. "This edition is greatly enlarged, the whole of the third volume being added. This translation was made by the author himself." [Sabin]. The folding maps depict Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, the northern United States, and the Ohio River. The northern United States map is from New England, south to Virginia and west to Illinois. A whole third volume has been added to this edition as well as four plates and three maps, including a version of the famous Lewis Evans map as corrected by Thomas Jefferys, and smaller maps of the Muskingam and Grand Castor Rivers
The book has "some of the most thoughtful and influential commentary on the meaning of the Revolution ... This is certainly one of the chief works of literature and one of the most important observations on America in the era of the Revolution. Also notable are Crevecoeur's account of Nantucket and the excellent maps of that island and Martha's Vineyard" [Reese].
"These are a series of twelve charming letters, describing life in America, four of them about Nantucket, and one about Martha's Vineyard and the Whale Fishery" [Streeter Sale]. "They have a winsome flavor, and picture so delectably the independence, the resources, and peace of an agricultural life, just before and after the Revolution, in the more settled states of America, that the reader of the present day cannot feel surprised that he beguiled many an emigrant from the Old World to the banks of the Ohio and the Delaware" [Larned].
Along with his descriptions of the charms of American life, Crevecouer does not shrink from painting a dark picture of "the horrors of slavery, the hardship of incessant toils; and no one thinks with compassion of those showers of sweat and of tears which from the bodies of Africans, daily drop, and moisten the ground they till. The cracks of the whip urging these miserable beings to excessive labour, are far too distant from the gay Capital to be heard..."
Howes C883. Sabin 17495. Reese, Revolutionary Hundred 70. Streeter Sale 711. Larned 1283.