Blane’s Travels through the United States and Canada – Volume with Two Maps

This volume is William Blane’s Travels Through the United States and Canada. The work was published in 1828 in London by Badwin & Co. This work was first issued in 1822 as An Excursion Through the United States and Canada.

The work includes two folding maps. One map is of the United States of America and was done by John Melish. The other map is of Niagara by Darby. The volume is modernly rebound in half morocco with marbled boards.

William Newnham Blane (1750-1835) was an Englishman who travelled extensively through North America. Blane writes predominantly about his journey through the Midwest including visits in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. He spends about a one quarter of the work on his journey in the South. Blane writes about the culture in America including slavery, indigenous tribes, frontier, housing, emigration, government, laws, Shakers, and more.

“[Blane] criticized his own countrymen for their prejudiced and unfair accounts of American life, but noted evidence of a changing attitude. He concluded that the frontier was not a place where immigrant Englishmen would be happier, but recommended any part of America for the poor Irish.” (Clark II:184

Blane stated in the work, “There is no subject upon which the people of England have been completely misinformed, than that of the American character the writings of ignorant individuals have raised a cloud of prejudice against the inhabitants of the United States, that superior information is only just beginning to dissipate… The last paragraph of the last chapter on the American Character sums it all up ‘For my own part, although I went to America full of prejudice against the nation, yet I returned with very different impressions, having been always treated with the most unbounded hospitality and kindness. I am confident, that when many enlightened travelers have visited that great Republic, Englishmen will begin to esteem and respect a people, connected with them, not only by language, manners and laws, but also, by that strongest of all ties, Mutual Interest. In contemplating that grand spectacle afforded by this rising, though as yet only an infant nation, every unprejudiced Englishman must rejoice, when pointing to it he can exclaim — This was founded by my countrymen!.'”