Description

Easton Press leather edition of Richard Henry Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast and Twenty-Four Years After," a MILLENNIUM edition, With Introduction, Notes and Illustrations, Frontispiece portrait of R. H. Dana, Jr., one of the HARVARD CLASSICS series, published in 2001. Bound in burgundy leather, the book has matching moire silk end leaves with gold tooling around the edges, a satin book marker, hubbed spine, acid-free paper, gold gilding on three edges---in FINE condition---Opened from SHRINK WRAP for photos. Richard Henry Dana, who lived from 1815--1882, was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, a descendant of an eminent colonial family, who gained fame for the memoir, "Two Years Before the Mast." While an undergraduate at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles which affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor on a voyage around CAPE HORN on the brig PILGRIM. He returned to Massachusetts two years later, aboard the Alert (which left California sooner than the Pilgrim ). He kept a diary throughout the voyage, and, after returning, he wrote a recognized American classic, " Two Years Before the Mast ," published in 1840. The term "before the mast" refers to the quarters of the common sailors, in the forecastle, in the front of the ship. His writing evidences his later sympathy with the lower classes. He later became a prominent anti-slavery activist and helped found the Free Soil Party. In the book, which takes place between 1834 and 1836, Dana gives a vivid account of "the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is." He sails from Boston to South America and around Cape Horn to California. Dana's ship was on a voyage to trade goods from the United States for the Mexican colonial Californian missions' and ranchos' cow hides. They traded at the ports in San Diego Bay, San Pedro Bay, Santa Barbara Channel, Monterey Bay, and San Francisco Bay. B oth as a writer and as a lawyer, he was a champion of the downtrodden, from seamen to fugitive slaves and freedmen. Dana captures the tedious, difficult work of a sea man. The chapter with the brutal flogging is a real life witnessing. 426 pages---ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS! I offer Combined shipping.