The Zigzag Club goes looking for New France
Hezekiah Butterworth’s richly illustrated 1885 travel book follows the Zigzag Club through fictionalized journeys and early colonial history; Estes and Lauriat issued it in Boston.
The story
Hezekiah Butterworth taught history by sending his readers on a trip. In this book the Zigzag Club travels through the early French settlements of North America, the lands the title calls Acadia and New France, and the journey is a frame for stories and episodes from the colonial past. The travels are invented and the history is real, a mix aimed at young readers learning about the past.
Estes and Lauriat of Boston published it in 1885 and filled it with engravings: portraits, landscape views and scenes of colonial life. They bound it in pictorial yellow cloth decorated in black and gilt, a binding meant to catch the eye.
This copy keeps that original mustard-yellow cloth, rubbed at the edges and corners and a little worn at the spine ends, with its patterned endpapers. The inner hinges are weak and splitting, the rear one most of all, and the pages are lightly toned. The pagination and the number of illustrations have not been checked.
Details
- Date
- 1885
- Publisher
- Estes & Lauriat, Boston
- Binding
- cloth: Original yellow illustrated publisher's cloth with black/gilt decorative printing; worn edges, cracked rear inner hinge.
- Condition
- Original mustard-yellow pictorial cloth with ornate black and gilt stamping, showing edge/corner rubbing and slight spine-end wear. Vintage patterned endpapers; notable weakening and splitting of internal hinges with exposed cloth/paper structure, especially rear hinge photographed on PDF p32. Pages lightly toned with illustrated plates; complete pagination and illustration count unverified.
