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This series includes accounts of historical events and movements by eye-witnesses and contemporaries, as well as landmark studies that assembled significant source materials or developed new historiographical methods. The works range from the writings of early U.S. presidents to journals of poor European settlers, from travellers' descriptions of bustling cities and vast landscapes to critiques of racial inequality and descriptions of Native American culture under threat of annihilation. The commercial, political and social aspirations and rivalries of the 'new world' are reflected in these fascinating eighteenth- and nineteenth-century publications.

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163 results in Cambridge Library Collection - North American History

Page 8 of 9

With Thackeray in America
  • Eyre Crowe
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    28 January 2010
    First published in:
    1893
  • The British painter Eyre Crowe chronicled, through words and pictures, his six-month American tour with William Makepeace Thackeray. Crowe accompanied Thackeray in the unfamiliar role of his secretary during the latter's lecture tour round the United States in 1852–3, and his illustrated account was published in 1893 – thirty years after the writer's death – under the title, With Thackeray In America. Crowe relates that the renowned humourist asked him to accompany him for the simple reason that 'Six months tumbling about the world will do you no harm.' A lasting and memorable partnership was formed, and the details of the adventure were preserved in Crowe's amusing running commentary as well as in his art.

Royalty in the New World
  • Or, the Prince of Wales in America
  • Kinahan Cornwallis
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    06 August 2009
    First published in:
    1860
  • Through his affiliation with the New York Herald, the young English-born writer Kinahan Cornwallis (1839–1917), was afforded the opportunity to witness the nineteen-year-old Prince of Wales's 1860 highly successful tour of Canada and America more closely than any other individual outside the royal party. He chronicled his observations and depicted the progress of the first visit of a member of the British royal family to the Americas, and the resulting book was quickly published in New York. Cornwallis wrote that his great aim in recounting the travels of His Royal Highness was to provide the most accurate account of the tour, a task for which he considered himself uniquely qualified. He expected his volume to be received with equal enthusiasm, and the events to be accorded equal historical significance, in both England and America, perhaps even strengthening the deeply rooted bonds between the people of both nations.

The Englishwoman in America
  • Isabella L. Bird
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1856
  • In 1856, Isabella Bird published The Englishwoman in America, the first of what would be many books of her travels around the world. Adopting a tone of aloof bemusement, she describes in detail the hardships and annoyances of her travels by sea from England to Halifax, and on the road to Boston, Cincinnati, and Chicago. The book's 20 chapters are full of keenly observed and entertainingly told stories of pickpockets and luggage thieves, greasy hotels, and Americans who are very polite, but have the unfortunate habit of spitting on the floor. Bird admits to sharing the regrettably prejudiced view the English have of America, but nevertheless finds much to like and admire in this new country bustling with ethnically diverse immigrants full of energy and bravado. The Englishwoman in America is a wonderful travelogue that offers a lively and personal glimpse into mid-nineteenth-century America.

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains
  • Isabella L. Bird
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1879
  • After the success of The Englishwoman in America (also reissued in this series), the indefatigable Isabella Bird (1831–1904) continued her travels – first to Scotland, then to Australia and Hawaii – before returning to the United States and taking up residence in what was then the newest state, Colorado. Her adventures here – recorded as letters to her sister which she artlessly tells the reader were never intended for publication – included riding alone across the prairie, trying to help a family dying of cholera in the face of indifference from the local inhabitants, a sight of the invalids who were coming to Denver in huge numbers to be cured by the mountain air, and an encounter (if it was nothing more) with that western archetype, the one-eyed, romantic, courteous, poetry-declaiming outlaw, who by the following year was 'in a dishonoured grave, with a rifle bullet in his brain'.

Portraits of Places
  • Henry James
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1883
  • Written by Henry James, Portraits of Places is a record of the author's reminiscences of his travels in Italy, France, and England during 1876–1882. Beginning in Venice, James takes the reader on a journey through Italy to France (Paris, Rheims, Normandy and the Pyrenees) and England (London, Warwickshire). His finely crafted word-portraits vividly evoke the less-frequented monuments of Europe, the abbeys and castles, events and festivals, and the scenic beauty of London at different times of the year. Also included are sketches of four scenic locales in North America: Saratoga, Newport, Quebec, and Niagara. Portraits of Places is a vintage work by a famous literary figure that memorably captures scenes of cultural and historical beauty on both sides of the Atlantic, as observed by an American traveller over a period of six years.

The Statesmen of America in 1846
  • Sarah Mytton Maury
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1847
  • In this book, first published in 1847, the English author Sarah Mytton Maury gives a personal and very positive account of her impressions of the United States upon arriving there in late 1845. Through marriage she gains access to many American statesmen of her day, and the book is dedicated to James Buchanan, later President of the United States. Maury portrays prominent senators, judges, officers, members of the clergy and Presidents John Adams and James K. Polk. Many of the descriptions are interspersed with extracts from speeches and letters by those portrayed. The book gives a great deal of attention to the early nineteenth-century dispute between Britain and the United States about territorial claims in the north-west, the so-called 'Oregon Question'. On this question as in other matters of contention or cultural differences between the two countries, Maury maintains a position of neutrality.

A Hunter's Experiences in the Southern States of America
  • Captain Flack
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1866
  • Captain Flack, known for his columns in The Field, published this record of the his experiences of hunting, shooting and fishing in the Southern states of America in 1866. Starting with an introduction about the wilderness of the American forests and life in the western prairies, the book goes on to record the natural history of mammals and game-birds in the South. It provides graphic descriptions of the author's encounters with wildlife including antelopes, bison, bears, wild turkeys, fish, alligators and snakes, as well as bee hunting. Flack describes the South as the paradise of the true sportsman. In an appendix, the author provides a guide to the locations where each kind of game may be found, together with information about routes and costs. This detailed and entertaining account provides fascinating insights into Victorian social history and valuable data on the ecology of the Southern states at that time.

Three Years Among the Working-Classes in the United States during the War
  • James Dawson Burn
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    13 August 2009
    First published in:
    1865
  • James Dawson Burn's 1865 book endeavours to give a true account of the industrial, social, moral and political state of the working class in America, and is addressed partly to intending emigrants. His study examines the people themselves, as well as the circumstances that influenced their conduct during the Civil War, and draws comparisons between their condition and that of the working class in Europe. Burns, writing from the perspective of an English visitor to the United States, remarks that upon seeing the visible social comfort there, he came to believe that lower-class Americans of the period were far in advance of their peers in his own country. Given that American rights and liberties provided such a strong inducement for the labouring population of Europe to flock to its shores, Burns intended his research to serve as a guide for what they could and could not expect.

Journal
  • Volume 2
  • Fanny Kemble
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1835
  • Frances Anne Kemble (1809–93) was a famous London-born actress who toured the United States with her father for several years before marrying the Philadelphia landowner and heir Pierce Butler. Her two-volume journal, first published in 1835 under her married name, shocked the American public for its ungenerous and often biting criticisms of the young country. Detailing Kemble's voyage to and tour of the United States, the journal contains first hand accounts of the cities of the eastern seaboard in the early nineteenth-century and the manners and customs of its people. Noted for its candid observations and strong personal style, Kemble's journal remains one of her most lasting literary works.

Greater Britain
  • Volume 2
  • Charles Wentworth Dilke
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1868
  • As a young man, Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843–1911), the Cambridge-educated Radical politician, spent two years touring the English-speaking world. This two-volume illustrated account of his travels was published in 1868, the year in which he first became a member of Parliament. Volume 2 opens as he leaves America in late 1866 for Australia and South Asia in search of British influences. This second leg of his journey confirmed for Dilke that England not only existed elsewhere beyond Great Britain, but that it spoke to the whole world through its cultural and societal offshoots across the entire globe. His discoveries of traditional English customs and lifestyles in the farther reaches of Australia, India and even Russia are recounted with pleasure and surprise. The book sheds light on British colonial culture at the height of the empire, through the eyes of a youthful, left-wing observer.

Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839
  • Fanny Kemble
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1863
  • A few years after her marriage to a wealthy American, the English stage-actress Frances Anne Kemble (1809–1893) moved with her husband to his residence in Georgia, where he had inherited two plantations. There she kept a journal of her shocking observations of the practice of slavery. Written over a period of less than four months, Kemble's journal records her day-to-day encounters with her husband's slaves, and attempts to expose the moral injustice of slavery. The journal circulated privately among her friends, but was not published until 1863, long after Kemble's divorce in 1849. Her book is credited with influencing Britain's position of neutrality during the American Civil War despite the cotton industry's lobbying in favour of the South. Kemble's journal remains a lasting and important critique of slavery, and a valuable document about the nineteenth-century American south.

Society in America
  • Volume 2
  • Harriet Martineau
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1837
  • The British scholar Harriet Martineau spent two years travelling throughout the United States before writing her three-volume commentary, Society in America, in 1837. Her lengthy journey began in New York in the autumn of 1834, less than sixty years after the birth of the United States, and she immersed herself in the politics, economics, civilisation and religions of the country before returning to England in the summer of 1836. Her travels took her to the nation's capital, where she enjoyed the hospitality of the president, witnessed Supreme Court proceedings and visited both houses of Congress. She also went to prisons, hospitals and mental institutions, literary and scientific foundations, factories, plantations and farms around the land; lived in farmhouses and log cabins; and travelled by horse, stagecoach and steamboat. This second volume is devoted to the United States economy of the 1830s, examining American agriculture, transportation, manufacturing and commerce.

Men and Manners in America
  • Volume 1
  • Thomas Hamilton
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    13 August 2009
    First published in:
    1833
  • Throughout Men and Manners in America, Thomas Hamilton (1789–1842) describes with scathing honesty, and a sometimes sarcastic wit, the political and social structures of the newly independent United States. Hamilton journeyed to America in 1830, determined to write a conclusive and impartial account of its democracy. On his return, however, he was desperately aware that this impartiality had produced writings with the potential to deeply offend. Men and Manners in America was, in fact, published almost a year later (1833) when Hamilton finally felt duty-bound to speak the truth. His writings serve as a discerning and thorough study of the beginnings of American democracy, and as a delightfully unintended example of the 'prejudices natural to an [nineteenth- century] Englishman'. Volume 1 describes his experiences of New York, Boston, New England, and Philadelphia.

Notions of the Americans
  • Picked Up by a Travelling Bachelor
  • Volume 2
  • James Fenimore Cooper
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1828
  • The 'Travelling Bachelor' who is named as author on the original title page of this two-volume work is in fact James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), best remembered today as the writer of The Last of the Mohicans (1826), generally regarded as his masterpiece, which has remained in print and been adapted for cinema and television many times. In fact, Cooper was a prolific author of political journalism and travel writing as well as novels. His Notions of the Americans is an epistolary work in which Cooper adopts the persona of a well-travelled European clubman who has decided to explore the United States in the same spirit as that in which the offspring of the British nobility undertook the Grand Tour. Within a light-hearted narrative, Cooper's serious purpose was to reveal the nature of this brand-new nation to his own countrymen as well as to Europeans.

Journal
  • Volume 1
  • Fanny Kemble
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1835
  • Frances Anne Kemble (1809–1893) was a famous London-born actress who toured the United States with her father for several years before marrying the Philadelphia landowner and heir Pierce Butler. Her two-volume journal, first published in 1835 under her married name, shocked the American public for its ungenerous and often biting criticisms of the young country. Detailing Kemble's voyage to and tour of the United States, the journal contains first hand accounts of the cities of the eastern seaboard in the early nineteenth-century and the manners and customs of its people. Noted for its candid observations and strong personal style, Kemble's journal remains one of her most lasting literary works.

American Scenes and Christian Slavery
  • A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States
  • Ebenezer Davies
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1849
  • First published in 1849, American Scenes and Christian Slavery is a description, in epistolary format, of American life, nature, culture, and its slave trade during the nineteenth century, as observed by a British abolitionist, Ebenezer Davies, during his travels through the United States. Davies had been the minister of Mission Chapel, New Amsterdam, and in this collection of letters, he offers valuable contemporary perspectives on the people and the manners of America as they appeared to him during a journey of over four thousand miles. A favourable reception of a few similar letters that were published in the Patriot magazine paved the way for the preparation of this book. The book's 37 chapters record the author's impressions of Ohio, the river Mississippi and the cities of New Orleans, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Davies' travelogue is a witty account of an English traveller's experiences of nineteenth-century America.

Travels in the United States, etc. during 1849 and 1850
  • Volume 1
  • Emmeline Stuart-Wortley
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 September 2009
    First published in:
    1851
  • Published in 1851, Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley's account of her travels through the Americas during the mid nineteenth century represents an early example of the travel writing genre. The United States was becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination for Europeans at this time, and Lady Emmeline's writings present a quintessentially British impression of America and its people. Volume I of this three-volume work begins with Lady Emmeline's arrival in New York in 1849, and the reader accompanies her to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington and New Orleans before returning to New York. Written in an engaging and conversational tone, the volumes are both informative and entertaining, fulfilling the author's aim to 'amuse' with 'the gossip of travel.'

A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States
  • With Remarks on their Economy
  • Volume 2, 2nd edition
  • Frederick Law Olmsted, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr, William P. Trent
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1856
  • Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) was a journalist and landscape designer who is regarded as the founder of American landscape architecture: his most famous achievement was Central Park in New York, of which he became the superintendent in 1857, but he also worked on the design of parks in many other burgeoning American cities, and was called by Charles Eliot Norton 'the greatest artist that America has yet produced'. His A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States was originally published in 1856, and arose from journeys in the south which Olmsted, a passionate abolitionist, had undertaken in 1853–4. This edition was published in two volumes in 1904, with the addition of a biographical sketch by his son and an introduction by William P. Trent. It abounds in fascinating and witty descriptions of Olmsted's encounters and experiences in a society which was on the verge of overwhelming change.

American Notes for General Circulation
  • Volume 1
  • Charles Dickens
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1842
  • Charles Dickens (1812–1870) is best remembered today for the novels which offer a fantastic, even grotesque panorama of Victorian life, but he was a journalist before he became a novelist. His travel writings have all the energy and urgency of journalism, and these two volumes, drawn from his experiences on a six-month tour of America between January and June 1842, are no exception. Dickens was already hugely popular with the American reading public, and he was lionised wherever he went, but the American Notes, and the American scenes in Martin Chuzzlewit, caused great controversy and were felt by many to insult the people and institutions of the United States. Dickens's dedication of American Notes, to 'those friends of mine in America ... who, loving their country, can bear the truth when it is told good humouredly, and in a kind spirit' suggests that he was not surprised by this reaction.

Across the Plains
  • With other Memories and Essays
  • Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1892
  • The celebrated Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson arranged for his friend the art historian Sidney Colvin to select and organise the essays in this volume, many of which had originally appeared in 1888, though some date back to the early 1880s. It was published in 1892, two years before Stevenson's untimely death. Colvin obtained many of the pieces from their original publishers, including magazines such as Fraser's, Longman's, The Magazine of Art and Scribner's. What is particularly noteworthy about this collection is that although Stevenson had settled in the South Seas well before it appeared, all the items included were written prior to his journey there. Colvin mentions that the concluding pieces in particular were written during a period of considerable gloom and sickness for Stevenson, who himself claimed to 'recover peace of body and mind' after moving to the Pacific in 1890.

Page 8 of 9