Five Years' Residence in the Canadas: including A Tour through Part of The United States of America, in the year 1823

London. Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green. 1824. 8vo. 23cm, The First Edition, in 2 volumes, xvi,419 & vii,400pp., with 2 aquatint frontis views, 2 page plan, in the original publisher's boards, new paper labels, uncut, private library stamp on the verso of the title page, preliminaries including title page and frontis in both volume have some foxing or toning, (not obtrusive), the rest of the text is clean and sound, a very good to fine set of the first edition. ~ T.P.L. 1299. Dionne 1018. Gagnon 3460. Lande 824. Sabin 94229. - The two plates, which are by T. Brown, are fine examples of early lithography. Edward Talbot was born in Ireland in 1796, and emigrated with his family and a party of Irish immigrants to Middlesex County, near London, Ontario, Upper Canada in 1818. He was successively a teacher and a journalist, founding the radical "London Sun" in 1831. He travelled extensively throughout Upper and Lower Canada, and was only 23 when he wrote this work which was published in London. He describes the life in Upper Canada at the time, and gives a detailed account of the flora and fauna, climate, society, education, emigration, manners and Indians, of the Lower Canadians. Talbot's account was written with a view to giving a more realistic appraisal of the prospects and difficulties for immigrants than he felt was afforded by a number of contemporary works. ~ "Edward Allen Talbot, a young Irishman, described the trip taken by his family up the St. Lawrence in search of a new life, replacing the discouragement of improved gentility in Ireland. Lively impression of Montreal, Kingston, York and the London region are capped by a last description of his solitary pedestrian return to Montreal. As a picturesque tour his book is cheerful and entertaining. But the book was written to warn potential emigrants of the danger of trusting agents' accounts of the new country, and to show the "semi-barbarism" of life in the settlements. This led him to brilliant humourous accounts of "bees", "Charivaris", [Chivaree], new York's visits, tavern life, elections and agricultural practices". Waterston p42.