An American student’s 1855 letters home, printed in 1932

In April 1855 James Francis Magee left Philadelphia by ship for Europe, and as a student abroad he wrote letters about what he found: the crossing, university life and the cities of Europe. Nearly eighty years later George W. Magee, Jr., edited the letters, and the Magee Press of Philadelphia printed them in 1932.

An introduction tells the writer’s life: his education, his work surveying for the railroads and his interest in science. The book is two things at once: firsthand travel writing by an American in Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century, and a family’s memorial to one of its own.

This copy is in cream printed card covers, lettered in black and red, rather than the cloth bindings that dealers more often describe. The covers have brown water rings and spots and worn edges and corners, the paper is browned, and red thread shows along the spine. The Library of Congress records some 300 pages with portrait plates; this copy has not been collated.