Lewis, Meriwether & William Clark

The Travels of Capts. Lewis & Clarke, from St. Louis, by way of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, to the Pacific Ocean. London: [C. Stower] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, 1809

8vo (9 x 5½ in.; 228 x 140 mm, uncut). Folding engraved map; some mostly marginal spotting in a few quires. Contemporary pale blue boards, printed title label on spine, engraved armorial bookplate on upper cover, in a brown cloth drop-box; joints and edges torn.

Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland ( with the Holland House engraved bookplate on upper cover and front pastedown)

Graff 2479; Howes L321; Sabin 40827; Wagner-Camp 8:2

Folding engraved map; some mostly marginal spotting in a few quires. Contemporary pale blue boards, printed title label on spine, engraved armorial bookplate on upper cover, in a brown cloth drop-box; joints and edges torn.
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First English edition of the Lewis and Clark “Apocrypha,” an anthology (assembled by Hubbard Lester) of previously printed works which was nontheless one of the earliest accounts of the expedition, remaining a major source of information about the West until the explorers’ own official narrative was published in 1814.

First published in Philadelphia the same year, the text includes President Jefferson’s Message … communicating Discoveries of 1806; letters of William Clark; and plagiarized portions of the works of Jonathan Carver, Alexander Mackenzie, and Patrick Gass. The one original contribution made by this publication is the “Map of the Country Inhabited by the Western Tribes of Indians,” which Wheat called “the earliest published map with legends stemming from Lewis and Clark.”