Lewis and Clark Bicentenary
by Sue West

Previous Rare Book Notes: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire A Booklover's Burton The Curse of the Nile Explorers A Tale of Two Illustrators Books Do Tell a Story Holiday Entertaining Lewis and Clark Bicentenary A Special Offering Guaranteed to Fit: The Collectible and Rare Book The Hitchhiker's Guide to First Editions Science, Technology, and the Amazing Fact That I Can See Past the End of My Nose Of Shoes, and Ships, and Sealing-Wax... Of Cabbages, and Kings Verboten Valuables

The early nineteenth-century public wanted to read about the expedition. (They primarily wanted to read about Native Americans, and also to find out more about the Louisiana Purchase.) Clark obtained the best editor for this purpose in Nicholas Biddle, who spent almost a year transcribing the journals into a narrative that would capture an audience. Biddle subsequently chose Paul Allen to complete the publication process. Powell's Books has a very rare, and beautiful, copy of this first edition, uncut and in boards with the corresponding map drawn by Samuel Lewis from Clark's original. We have another copy rebound without the map, and we also have two London editions. The London editions are a larger format, and the paper is preferable to the paper used in the U. S. editions. These Biddle-Allen editions were published in 1814.

Patrick Gass was a sergeant with the "Corps of Discovery" and kept a journal, as all the sergeants were required to do. Gass was the first to publish his journal, which was very popular and went into many printings. We have in our collection copies of the printings from Paris, 1810; Philadelphia, 1812; and the very rare Weimar edition, 1814.

We have a couple of apocryphal editions from 1809, each a compilation of other Lewis and Clark documents already in print by then. They have become increasingly scarce.

We also have a very nice early publication, Travels in the Interior, a report of Lewis and Clark's findings published in London in 1807, addressed to the senate, with the proper collation and pagination.

The publishing history around the Lewis and Clark journals is convoluted at best. Some reasons were the mysterious death of Lewis, the War of 1812, and publishers abandoning the project due to bankruptcy. The list goes on as to why, but the journals were not published in full until 100 years after the expedition. If you're interested, Paul Russell Cutright's History of the Lewis and Clark Journals is a great read.

We have four sets of the complete Lewis and Clark journals in all — three different editions of sets edited by Reuben Thwaites, and a very good set edited by Elliott Coues.

I hope you enjoy exploring this remarkable collection. I welcome questions about any of the above material; please write to sue.west@powells.com.

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