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 Includes highly derisive description of Marylanders. Most desirable edition, containing twenty-five maps, including the famous Filson map of Kentucky.
Rev. Jedidiah Morse. The American Geography; or, a view of the present situation of the United States of America containing ... A particular description of Kentucky, the Western Territory, the Territory South of Ohio, and Vermont ... with a view of the British, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Dutch dominions, on the continent, and in the West Indies, and of Europe, Asia, and Africa ... A new edition. London: printed for John Stockdale, 1794. 25 engraved maps.
Inventory# 20912.99 $35,000
Second London, and the first quarto (8 x 10 ½”), edition of the first American geography. Howes calls this “the best edition,” and states that a few copies were issued with twenty-five maps. Of the 25 maps, 18 are of states or slightly larger areas of the United States, and only one (of new discoveries around the Globe) is not specifically tied to the Americas. The Thomas W. Streeter copy, and most other copies, only have three maps. Filson’s famous map of Kentucky, included here, is one of the key cartographic landmarks of the trans-Allegheny frontier. It is essentially unprocurable in the American first edition published in Elizabethtown, New Jersey in 1789, and was not contained in the first London edition. Morse’s text provides extensive geographical information for each state and province, including the western territory and the Spanish dominions of Louisiana, Florida, New Mexico and California, as well as on the major countries and regions of the world.
Most of this volume is text, with maps interspersed. The focus of both the text and the maps is primarily North America, with greatest concentration on U.S. The text essentially serves as a “book of facts” re the states and territories covered. There is overview information about the U.S. – geography, history, wildlife, statistics, etc., and a full printing of the Constitution along with the Convention and George Washington’s transmittal letters, and the Bill of Rights.
There is a map of Maryland (which includes parts of Virginia, Delaware and “Indiana”), and a map of Virginia, which includes southern Maryland. Annapolis appears on both the map of Maryland and the map of North America. The Maryland map, per the Maryland State Archives, “is a simplified version of the Fry and Jefferson map [AL 04] of Virginia and Maryland of 1753… It covers the area from New Castle, Delaware in the north to Back Bay in the south (south of Cape Henry) and from east of Cape May, N.J. to the confluence of the Ohio and the Great Kanhawa Rivers in an area erroneously titled “Indiana” (now West Virginia). The map shows principal roads, mountain ranges, and swamps. Washington, D.C. is not yet designated. The boundaries of Virginia with its neighbors are not shown except on the Delmarva Peninsula.”
Several pages of text cite or discuss Maryland history, people, etc. including a short but rather complimentary paragraph on Annapolis, a two-paragraph footnote on George Calvert, and mention of Ann Arundell. Of particular interest are several pejorative passages about Marylanders, characterizing the country dwellers as slovenly and indolent, and many of the city residents as avaricious and inhospitable. Of Maryland country-dwellers, Morse wrote:
“To an inhabitant of the middle, and especially of the eastern states, which are thickly populated, they appear to live very retired and unsocial lives. The effects of this comparative solitude are visible in the countenances, as well as in the manners and dress of the country people. You observe very little of that cheerful sprightliness of look and action which is the invariable and genuine offspring of social intercourse. Nor do you find that attention paid to dress, which is common, and which decency and propriety have rendered necessary, among people who are liable to receive company almost every day. Unaccustomed, in a great measure to these frequent and friendly visits, they often suffer a negligence in their dress which borders on slovenliness. There is apparently a disconsolate wildness in their countenances, and an indolence and inactivity in their whole behavior, which are evidently the effects of solitude and slavery.”
And of townspeople:
“[although] there are many respectable families in Baltimore, who live genteely [and] are hospitable to strangers,…the bulk of the inhabitants, recently collected from almost all quarters of the world, [are] bent on the pursuit of wealth….[They are] varying in their habits, their manners and their religions, if they have any, [and] are unsocial, unimproved and inhospitable.”
Papenfuse and Coale note that this did not help sales of the atlas in the American South and that the most insulting part of the text had been edited out by 1796 (the 3rd of 7 editions). In the meantime, however, Carey’s edition of Modern Geography had appeared, which admitted that Marylanders were reserved, but lauded them for being hospitable and elegant.
Most copies of Morse have only three maps; this rare copy (evidently one of a special printing), has 25, one of them being the rare Filson map of Kentucky. In this respect, it is more desirable than the original 1789 edition.
Historical Background
Morse (1761-1826), a Yale-educated Congregational minister, sought the assistance of prominent leaders in revising his Geography, and even contacted such luminaries as Washington and Franklin. Through Chauncey Whittelsey, a tutor at Yale, Morse became acquainted with William Livingston, who aided Morse with his revision, and eventually became the book’s dedicatee. It was through Livingston’s influence and connections that Morse was able to collect the necessary data for such a wide-ranging work.
Expertly bound to style in half 18th-century diced russia gilt over 18th-century marbled paper boards.
References: Howes M840, “aa”; Sabin 50924; Streeter Sale 75.
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