CATLIN, George. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians. Written during eight years' travels amongst the wildest tribes of Indians in North America...
Item #0781
2 vols.; expertly rebound in modern three-quarter morocco over marbled boards with new endpapers; spine stamped in gilt. Vol. I: viii, 264 pp.; Vol. II: viii, 266 pp.; 2 maps, illustrated throughout with engravings from paintings by the author. London: Published by the author, at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, 1841. Second edition. Streeter III:1805. Wagner-Camp, Becker 84:4. Maps and plates not colored. The illustrations in Catlin's "Letters and Notes" present an interesting bibliographic problem, due primarily to the author's own erratic numbering system. There were a number of gaps in his plate numbering, while some plates included lettered details that Catlin counted as separate illustrations, with a few unnumbered and half-numbered plates thrown in for good measure. The first three editions of the book compounded this problem by stating "Four Hundred Illustrations" on the title page, when the acutal number, if one accounts for the lettered details and other irregularities, is 362. Subsequent editions corrected the illustration count to a safe guess of "several hundred" or the more precise "three hundred and sixty." As noted by Catlin in the errata slip to the first U.S. edition, "Although it may appear to the Reader, from the absence of numbers, that there are several of the Illustrations wanting, yet he will find that all the plates referred to in the text, are in the Book, and in their places, as the author designed them, and the work therefore complete." A beautifully preserved copy and fine thus. |
