Charles Edwin. An Island of the Sea. Descriptive of the Past and Present of St. Thomas, Danish West Indies. With a few short Stories about Bluebeard's and Blackbeard's Castles.

by TAYLOR

£550 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

TAYLOR, Charles Edwin. An Island of the Sea. Descriptive of the Past and Present of St. Thomas, Danish West Indies. With a few short Stories about Bluebeard's and Blackbeard's Castles. St Thomas: 'Published by the author at Taylor's Bookstore'. 1895. 8vo. Original illustrated cloth with bevelled edges, palm tree and floral motifs gilt to upper board, patterned endpapers; spine ands and corners slightly bumped; pp. 120, [6 (local advertisements)], photographic plates; text a little toned, repaired marginal tear to rear flyleaf, a very good copy. First edition, printed for the author – an English physician, violinist, dancer, bookseller, and printer – of this history of St Thomas from its Danish settlement in 1672 to the late nineteenth century, including local legends of Blackbeard, printed on St Thomas and distributed at his bookshop. The island of St Thomas was sold for twenty-five million dollars in gold to the United States during the First World War, after fifty years of preliminary negotiations and draft treatises between the two nations. Charles Edwin Taylor (b. 1843), FRGS and member of the Colonial Council of the Danish Antilles, was unable to attend university in England due to changes in his family’s financial circumstances, and instead worked at a mercantile firm in Canada before travelling the United States, spending two years in Cuba, and finally settling in St Thomas, which then had a total population of approximately 15,000. After marrying a woman from St Croix

• Binding: Hardcover

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