Townsend, Isaiah, Jr.:

$1,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

[MANUSCRIPT JOURNAL OF TRAVELS IN NORTHERN SPAIN IN 1836, DURING THE CARLIST CIVIL WAR]. An engaging account of travels along the north coast of Spain in the Basque country during the First Carlist War, the civil war fought between the conservative followers of Carlos V and the liberal defenders of the succession of the infant Isabel II between 1833 and 1840. The Basque region was a Carlist stronghold, and Townsend's account includes descriptions of encounters with the forces supporting Carlos, as well as being a narrative of the journey around the region, from Bayonne to Santander. The diary was composed in three separate parts from different locations in the Basque region in January and February of 1836, and is addressed to his sister.Isaiah Townsend, Jr., descended from a prestigious New York family that included Solomon Townsend, industrialist and state politician after the Revolution, and his father, Isaiah Sr., a prominent Albany merchant. On a prior Grand Tour of Europe in 1831 and 1832, he met David Baillie Warden, author of Bibliotheca Americana, with whom he would become great friends and whose library Townsend would broker to the New York State Library in 1844.A well-written travel diary by a notable New Yorker and close acquaintance to an important American bibliophile, filled with fascinating detail about the Basque area and the events of the day.

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