Morse, Jedidiah | First edition of the first American school geography, containing one of the earliest American maps of the United States, 1784

Morse, Jedidiah

Geography Made Easy. Being a short, but comprehensive system... New-Haven: Meigs, Bowen, and Dana, [1784]

12mo (155 x 90 mm). Early ownership inscriptions to front free endpaper and half-title dated 1785, engraved frontispiece, engraved folding map of America on two small sheets joined signed A. Doolittle, typographic tables and type-printed "maps" in text; lightly toned, mild spotting, a few marginal tears, uneven toning to the endpapers and half title, intermittent light dampstaining in the gutter affecting the first half of the text, a loss to the lower corner of the rear free endpaper, the folding map trimmed just within the platemark at bottom edge, not affecting the printing, and with a vertical strip of very faint toning along the join. Contemporary full sheep, gilt ruled spine with black leather label; staining and wear, a loss at the tail of the spine, corners lightly bumped, joints cracked, front hinge repaired, but holding soundly. Housed in an archival paper folder.

The "first American school geography and first American book describing the western country" (Howes).

First edition of one of the monuments of American pioneer research and education.

Published a year after the close of the Revolutionary War, Morse's Geography was the first work of its kind published in America. It includes chapters on East and West Floridas, New Mexico, Including California, and Louisiana which are of utmost interest — they are among the earliest accounts of American origin to describe those regions. Morse, with incredible foresight, concludes his account of California with the following prediction: "California is very advantageously situated for trade; and since the boundaries [of the United States] are continuously enlarging, it is not improbable that they will ere long extend to these, now inhospitable regions... and render the place of capital importance to mankind" (p. 108).

This scarce first edition geography textbook includes two maps—a world map and a highly detailed, very early folding map of the United States, engraved by Amos Doolittle and seen here in its first state. According to this book's previous owner, Warren Heckrotte, "The first appearance of a map of the U.S. printed in the U.S. is 1777; no copy has been located. The next appearance of maps of the U.S. printed in the U.S. was 1784. There were three: The Abel Buell map, the Wm. McMurray map, and this one in Morse" (as quoted in PBA Galleries, The Warren Heckrotte Collection, Part III, lot 38). The map features a patriotic cartouche with an eagle, Lady Liberty, and the motto "per aspera ad astra." Its geography and place names follow closely after Abel Buell's A New and Correct Map of the United States..., which was also published in New Haven in 1784. Morse would go on to expand this schoolbook into his American Geography of 1789 and his American Gazetteer of 1797.

REFERENCES

Howes M842; Wheat and Brun, 112; Sabin 50936

PROVENANCE

Golder, 9/81 — Warren Heckrotte (his sale, part III, Pacific Book Auctions, 10 March 2016, lot 38)