Product Description
Two volumes.
London: William Lane, 1789.
First edition.
Octavo (8 1/4" x 4 7/8", 210mm x 124mm): [Full collation available upon request] 250 leaves, pp [4] (half-title, blank, title, blank) i ii-iv (4pp.
dedication to Viscount Petersham, Earl of Harrington) [20] (19pp.
subscriber list, errata) v vi-vii [1] (instructions to the binder) 1 2-467 [1] (blank).
With an engraved vignette and 6 engraved plates, of which 5 are folding and 1 is a map.
Vol.
II: [Full collation available upon request] 284 leaves, pp.
[4] (half-title, blank, title, blank) 1 2-400 [4] (4pp.
depictions of currency) 401-558 [2] (2pp.
blank).
With 8 woodblock prints printed in red and black and 1 folding engraving.
With 7 engraved plates and 8 woodblock prints in toto.
Bound in tree calf.
On the spine, 6 panels.
"ANBURY'S TRAVELS" (sic) gilt to orange sheep in the second panel, number gilt to green morocco in the fourth.
Rebacked with the original backstrip laid down.
Corners bumped, scuffing to the boards.
Craquelure to the backstrip.
In volume I: tears to the top edge of E6.
Tear to M8, partially repaired with tape, affecting 8 lines of text.
Cc7 torn horizontally, affecting 5 lines of text.
Paper flaw to Cc8.
Tape repair to the folding map and multiple folding plates.
In volume II: first free endpaper detached.
Paper flaw to volume II C1, affecting two lines of text.
Paper flaw to the top edge of S7 and loss to the top edge of T3.
Vertical tear extending from the top edge of Ii1 and Ii2.
Scattered ink notation and marginalia throughout.
The young Brit Thomas Anburey (1759-1840) sailed from Cork in 1776.
Once on the shores of the colonies, he abandoned his cohort and served under General John Burgoyne in the Battle of Saratoga.
Anburey was then taken prisoner, but before being sent back to Britain in 1781 he was shipped to Virginia, and his account -- including his march to detention -- was written in the form of seventy-nine letters.
The letters were published 8 years after his return to the United Kingdom, then again published again in London in 1791 (described as a "New Edition").
The volumes became fodder for the masses newly interested in the events of the Revolution (Stedman's account would be printed shortly after).
The work was a subject of both controversy and entertainment.
Anburey's detailed writings looked suspicious to the analytical reader and armchair historian.
Both The Monthly Review and The Critical Review frowned at a few passages at the time: "From a careful comparison we can pronounce this work, in its most essential parts; to be an ill-digested plagiarism from General Burgoyne's Narrative, and from the Account of the Prosecution of Col.
Henley.
" Scholar of American studies Whitfield J.
Bell put it more plainly in 1943, writing that "half a dozen books and pamphlets, a pair of scissors, and a paste-pot in the hands of a Grub Street hack sufficed to make another book about America.
" Despite these critiques, the local color and impressive list of 600.
.
.
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