[Americana] Kalm, Peter: Travels into North America...

Kalm, Peter
Travels into North America...
Warrington and London: William Eyres and T. Lowndes, 1770-71. In three volumes. First edition in English. 8vo. xvi, 400; (ii), (viii, List of Subscribers), (3)-352; viii, 310, 14 pp. Translated from the Swedish by John Reinhold Forster. Illustrated with a large engraved folding map and six engraved plates. Full contemporary speckled brown calf, stamped in gilt, rebacked with original red gilt morocco spine labels laid down, extremities rubbed; edges stained green; scattered light browning and foxing to text and plates; in quarter brown morocco slip case and chemises. Howes K-5; Streeter 823; Sabin 36989; ESTC T123563

First edition of the English translation of Peter Kalm's important travelogue and account of the natural history of North America. "One of the most reliable eighteenth-century accounts of American natural history, social organization, and political situation. Kalm gives an especially important account of the American Swedish settlements" (Streeter). Kalm, a Swedish botanist, travelled extensively throughout North America between 1748-1751 at the behest of his teacher Carl Linnaeus and under the patronage of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. Tasked with studying the region's flora, Kalm arrived in Pennsylvania in 1748, and made his base of operations the Swedish communities in southern New Jersey. He made trips as far west as Niagara Falls and as far north as Quebec before returning to Sweden in 1751. The first edition was published in Stockholm between 1753-61.