EDWARDS, Bryan. - Lot 42

EDWARDS, Bryan. The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies. London, Printed for John Stockdale, 1794. 2 volumes in-4 (26 x 20 cm), frontispiece, LIV-494 pp., 2 plates and 9 maps, including one on two leaves; frontispiece, title page, 520-(1) pp., 3 plates. Modern speckled fawn half-basane, ribbed spine, title and volume number in gold, covers lined with pebbled paper, yellow edges (spine slightly faded, corners slightly rubbed, foxing, tear without loss at the folds of the large map of the West Indies, trace of an old English stamp). Second expanded edition. Complete and considered the best edition, with added maps, plans, and illustrations. A reference work on the Caribbean and the West Indies in the late 18th century. Copy on laid paper with wide margins. Bryan Edwards (1743–1800), a renowned English politician and historian who inherited a plantation in Jamaica, was able to provide a firsthand account of this region after the American Revolution and before the abolition of slavery. He provides a description of the islands, their natural history, and their inhabitants; the slave trade, of which he was a supporter; the cultivation of sugar, cotton, coffee, and other crops; and various documents concerning Barbados, Grenada, Saint Vincent, and the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. Illustrated with 16 black copper engravings, including a frontispiece at the beginning of each volume, 5 plates, and 9 maps: the West Indies on two sheets, a fold-out map of Jamaica, as well as maps of Barbados, Grenada, Saint Vincent, Dominica, Saint Kitts, Antigua, and the Virgin Islands. Sabin, V, 21901. Brunet, II, 947.