THE BOBINS COPY of "THE EARLIEST AND MOST IMPORTANT AQUATINT BOOK PUBLISHED ON CANADA". First edition. London: T. Gillet for Richard Phillips. Quarto (10 1/2" x 8 7/16", 268mm x 214mm). [Full collation available.] With 28 plates: 27 hand-colored aquatint plates, of which 7 are folding (one bound as a frontispiece; and a folding hand-colored engraved chart of the St. Lawrence River. Bound in XIXc half dark morocco over marbled boards. On the spine, five raised bands. Author and title gilt to the second panel. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block marbled. Worn at the edges, with some loss to the paper covers. Joints strengthened. Mild even tanning throughout, with foxing to quire EE and FF1. Leaf O1 trimmed at the fore (not affecting the text) but otherwise good margins, with many lower deckles preserved. Two of the folding plates with repairs at the margins and at the folds. Offsetting at the plates, with modern tissue guards laid in. Bookplate of Norman Bobins to the front paste-down. In the decades after American independence, the United Kingdom concentrated on the profitable management and settlement of Canada. The Canadas -- Upper and Lower (Quebec) -- stretched from the Great Lakes to the coast of Labrador (western territories would come only in the 1860's), and comprised territory rich in fur, timber and fish. George Heriot (1766-1844) was postmaster-general of the Canadas (that is, deputy postmaster general of the United Kingdom, responsible for the Canadas), and had traveled previously in the West Indies; he was, to boot, a self-taught artist of considerable accomplishment. The plates are all after Heriot's own watercolors. These experiences and abilities combined to produce two books, the 1804 History of Canada and the present work, celebrated by Hill as "the earliest and most important aquatint book published on Canada." The work was issued with uncolored as well as colored plates, as here; the latter is a traditional sought-after Canadianum. The text expresses the sociological attitudes of the day; the second part explores the customs of Native Americans right through North and South Americas, and is followed by Rasles's vocabulary of the Algonquin languages Norman Bobins began his vast collection of color-plate books in the early 1980's -- many having been purchased at Arader -- and began to disburse them in a series of landmark sales at Christie's. The present item was lot 45 in part one ("American Color," 16 June 2023). Abbey, Travel 618 (plates only); Bobins 50; Hill 801; Sabin 31489.
