[Lee, William]:

$9,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

THE TRUE AND INTERESTING TRAVELS OF WILLIAM LEE, BORN AT HADFIELD, NEAR DONCASTER...AND AFTERWARDS IN 1768 WENT WITH A VENTURE TO AMERICA, WHERE HE TRAVELLED THROUGH THE BACK SETTLEMENTS, AND ENDURED ... The second, and first obtainable edition, the first of which, published circa 1782, is known in one copy only, the Wymberley Jones De Renne copy at the University of Georgia. Lee arrived in America in 1768 and remained until 1782. In this narrative he recounts his experiences hunting and teaching at Fort Pitt and on the Juniata River, travelling to New Orleans via the Mississippi, and visiting Mobile and Pensacola. He managed a plantation in Georgia for a time and became a justice of the peace there, served briefly with Loyalist forces in Florida, and then fled to Jamaica to escape the Revolution. The last five pages contain a detailed description of his seventeen-day stay with the Creek Indians and a hurricane at Pensacola. He describes adventures with a French privateer off the coast of Scotland after returning to his home in England. The frontispiece depicts "Willm. Lee in his Indian Dress" while hunting. The original edition of 1782 was, according to the titlepage, printed verbatim from Lee's original manuscript, written at the request of his aged mother. Not in Clark, and quite rare in the market. Apart from the present copy, sold to the collector, Jay Kislak, by this firm in 1992, Rare Book Hub lists only three other copies at auction: a copy offered in 1914 from the co

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