Sep 15, 2011 - Sale 2253

Sale 2253 - Lot 201

Price Realized: $ 4,800
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
FIRST REPORT FROM THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION? (LEWIS AND CLARK.) [Taylor, John.] Cramer's Pittsburgh Magazine Almanack for A.D. 1806. 60 pages. 2 parts in one volume. 12mo, crudely stitched, lacking front wrapper, rear wrapper defective; dampstaining (particularly on first 3 leaves), first few leaves worn with slight loss to title page border; early owner's signature on page 36. Pittsburgh, PA: Zadok Cramer, [1805]
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Additional Details

This almanac includes two letters from the Lewis and Clark expedition. We believe this to be the earliest published report from the expedition outside of newspapers. It includes two letters written from Fort Mandan on pages 39 to 44: Lewis's letter to Thomas Jefferson dated 7 April 1805, and from Clark to Governor William Henry Harrison dated 2 April 1805. These letters had been sent back down the Missouri River with a dozen men while Lewis, Clark and the rest of the expedition continued westward.
Neither the 1904 Paltsits bibliography nor the exhaustive Literature of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by Beckham and Erickson acknowledges any reports from the expedition in book form earlier than Jefferson's February 1806 address, although both letters had previously appeared in newspapers. And yet here it is: an 1806 almanac which must have been printed late in 1805. So far as we know, it has escaped the attention of all Lewis & Clark bibliographers, except for a passing reference in the first edition of Wagner-Camp, item 4. If you can find an earlier printing, please let us know!
The original owner of this almanac, John Irwin (1752-1808), was a Revolutionary War major who founded the town of Irwin near Pittsburgh. Drake 10701 (lists only 3 complete copies). bound with quite worn and incomplete copies of the Pittsburgh Magazine Almanack for A.D. 1805, pages 3 to 38 (of 58) and Cramer's Pittsburgh Magazine Almanack for . . . 1809, pages 19-34.