Journal of an African Cruiser: Comprising Sketches of the Canaries, the Cape de Verds, Liberia, Madeira, Sierra Leone, and Other Places of Interest on the West Coast of Africa [Presentation Copy]

New York: George P. Putnam & Co, 1853. Presumed Third Printing, First Issue. Octavo (19.25cm); brown vertically-ribbed cloth, with titles stamped in gilt on spine, triple-ruled border and decorative centerpieces stamped in blind to covers; pale yellow endpapers; [ii],[viii],179,[3]pp. Inscribed in pencil on the front flyleaf: "Hon. J. Collamer / With respects of The Author" (possibly Jacob Collamer, judge and U.S. Senator from Vermont). Tiny chip to upper left corner of rear endpaper, handful of dog-eared pages smoothed out, else very Near Fine. `. Handsome copy of this volume Hawthorne edited for his friend and patron Horatio Bridge (1806-1893), a United States Navy officer. First printed in wrappers in 1845, Journal is the narrative of Bridge's trip on the USS Saratoga, "the flagship of Commodore Matthew Perry, with the mission to stop and search all American ships on the west coast of Africa that might be carrying slaves. That mission was fruitless (they saw none), but Bridge's comments on the efforts of the American Colonization Society in Liberia and on Africa in general were vivid" (Moore, Margaret B. the Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne, p.135). An interesting printing, not noted by BAL - "What appear to be first-issue sheets with the Putnam title page intact, gathered in the same form as the Putnam publication, are also found in a typical Ticknor format A binding...When Ticknor and Fields bought the Putnam plates for Mosses and Cruiser at the Bangs Bros. Trade Sale in New York, March 1854, they may have acquired some Putnam sheets that were later bound up in Ticknor style and distributed in an effort to recover some of the purchase costs" (Note: CLARK A14.1.c1). Presentation copies uncommon, with only two noted in Rare Book Hub (PBA, 2019; Goodspeed, 1910). cf.BAL 7597.