Scarce unsigned book: Travels in North-America, In the Years 1780, 1782, and 1782, Vols. I and II, by François Jean de Beauvoir, Marquis de Chastellux. London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, 1787. Hardcover bound in a one-quarter brown calf spine and blue marbled boards, 5.75 x 8.5, 894 pages. In the rear of Vol. I is an engraved map plate of the Chesapeake region (second map missing), and in the rear of Vol. II are three illustrated plates showing an unusual natural bridge. Book condition: G/None, with front boards of both volumes detached (with a crude repair to hinge of Vol. II), first free end page of Vol. I detached but present, bumped corners, rubbing to boards, and some foxing to textblock; inner pages are generally clean and tight. Both volumes bear the affixed bookplate of Joel Davis Madden, Jr., and are annotated inside as having been sold by Thomas Wilkinson of Barrow Hill.
Chastellux was a French military officer who served during American Revolution under the Comte de Rochambeau, acting as the principal liaison officer between Rochambeau and George Washington. Revered as a highly talented man of letters and a member of the Académie française, he published this important primary source look at life in postwar America, documenting his travels to Williamsburg, New Kent, Monticello, Lexington and Concord, Hartford, Portsmouth, Cambridge, Providence, and elsewhere. Bibliographer Wright Howes described the work as 'the first trustworthy record of life in the United States.'
Joel Davis Madden, Jr., left Princeton University in 1905 and moved west to make his fortune in the railroad industry. He went on to become an executive with the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and died suddenly in 1928 at the age of 41. His book collection, offered by his granddaughter, has not been publicly offered or privately sold in a century.
