Voyage Littéraire De La Grèce: Ou, Lettres sur les Grecs, Anciens et Modernes, Avec un Parallèle de Leurs Moeurs

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by M. Guys

Voyage Littéraire de la Grèce
GuysVoyageLitteraireGrece1783TitlePageV1.jpg

Title page from Voyage Littéraire de la Grèce, volume one, George Wythe Collection, Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary.

Author Pierre-Augustin Guys
Editor {{{editor}}}
Translator {{{trans}}}
Published Paris: Veuve Duchesne
Date 1783
Edition Third edition, revised, corrected
Language French
Volumes 4 volume set
Pages {{{pages}}}
Desc. 8vo (21 cm.)
Location Shelf B-3
  [[Shelf {{{shelf2}}}]]
Frontispiece, volume one.
This is a compilation of letters penned by Pierre-Augustin Guys (1721-1799). Although originally written in French, the book has also been translated to English. It was one of the first writings to show a favorable image of the Greeks; Guys believed they had been scorned only because people were not taking the time to study them sufficiently.[1] Guys believed that the best way to understand Ancient Greece was to study the Modern Greeks.[2]

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Listed in the Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as Voyages de la Grece 4.v. 8vo. de Guys and given by Thomas Jefferson to his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph. Later appears on Randolph's 1832 estate inventory as "'Guy's Letters on Greece' (4 vols., $2.50 value)." Both George Wythe's Library[3] on LibraryThing and the Brown Bibliography[4] identify this entry as the 1783 (third) edition. Barbara Dean listed this edition in her bibliography[5] and Jefferson sold the same edition to the Library of Congress.[6] Based on the evidence of these sources, the Wolf Law Library purchased a copy of the third edition.

"La Madrague ou Peche du Thon" from volume one.

Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy

Bound in full calf marble with richly adorned spine. Title page and volume number in red and green morocco. Purchased from Librairie Herodote.

Images of the library's copy of this book are available on Flickr. View the record for this book in William & Mary's online catalog.

See also

References

  1. Olga Augustinos, French Odysseys: Greece in French Travel Literature from the Renaissance to the Romantic Era (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 156.
  2. Konstantinos Andriotis, “Early Travellers to Greece and their Modern Counterparts” (paper presented at the Tourist Experiences: Meanings, Motivations, Behaviours, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK, April 1-4, 2009).
  3. LibraryThing, s.v. "Member: George Wythe," accessed on November 13, 2013.
  4. Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, 2009, rev. May, 2014.) Microsoft Word file. Earlier edition available at: https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/13433.
  5. Memorandum from Barbara C. Dean, Colonial Williamsburg Found., to Mrs. Stiverson, Colonial Williamsburg Found. (June 16, 1975), 4 (on file at Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary).
  6. E. Millicent Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, (Washington, D.C.: The Library of Congress, 1952-1959), 4:134-135, [no.3914].

External Links

Read volume one of this book in Google Books.