America Illustrated.

Item Details

Boston, DeWolfe, Fiske & Company,, [n.d., copyright 1883]., Decorative Cloth

Very good

Small folio. [1], 121 pp. Frontispiece. Black and white engravings throughout.

Publisher's green fine diaper cloth with illustrated front board stamped in gilt and black, both clean and bright. Moderate rubbing to board edges, as well as head and foot of spine. Front hinge cracked but sound. Very mild foxing to endpapers. A remarkably bright, very good copy.

DeWolfe, Fiske edition. First edition likely published by the Arundel Print in New York in 1874.

Little could be determined about J. David Williams, other than that he seems to have committed himself to the causes of naturalism and cartography in America. In 1873 he himself published The People’s Pictorial Atlas, and a detailed lithographed map of Texas issued in that same year is also credited to him. 

From the preface: “The purpose of this work is to make the people acquainted with the superb creations of Nature that distinguish our country above all others. With such an extraordinary richness of material, we regret that our attention, owing to the fact that our space is circumscribed through the marvelously low price at which this work is published, has necessarily been confined to the most prominent types of scenery. We have, however, endeavored in all cases to select as the subject of our illustrations, those landscapes whose names have for years been familiar as household words, but of whose sublime beauty and magnificence, nevertheless, the great mass of our population have had no adequate conception. Descriptions without illustrations are indeed ‘songs without words.’” A lavishly engraved survey of the nation’s landmarks and locales, including Yellowstone, Niagara Falls, the Adirondacks, and the Great Lakes.