Author: TROIL (Uno von) and BANKS (Joseph):
Title: Letters on Iceland: Containing observations on the civil, literary, ecclesiastical, and natural history ; antiquities, volcanos, basaltes, hot springs ; customs, dress, manners of the inhabitants, &c. &c. made, during a voyage undertaken in the year 1772, by Joseph Banks, Esq. F.R.S. assisted by Dr. Solander, F.R.S. Dr. J. Lind, F.R.S. Dr. Uno Von Troil, and several other literary and ingenious gentlemen. Written by Uno Von Troil, D.D. first chaplain to his Swedish Majesty, almoner of the Swedish orders of knighthood, and member of the Academy of Sciences at Stockholm. To which are added the letters of Dr. Ihre and Dr. Bach to the author, concerning the Edda and the elephantiasis of Iceland: Also, Professor Bergman's curious observations and chemical examination of the lava and other substances produced on the island. With a new map of the island, and representation of the remarkable boiling fountain called by the inhabitants Geyser.
Description: Dublin: Printed by G. Perrin, For. Price, and W. and H. Whitestone..., 1780. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. 8vo, 204 x 124 mms., pp. xxvi, 400, engraved frontispiece of geyser, folding engraved map, attractively bound in contemporary speckled calf, gilt border on covers, spine ornately gilt, red morocco label; spine rubbed, corners very slightly worn, but a very good copy, with the armorial bookplate of the Lyons Library on the front paste-down end-paper. This English translation of von Troil's work, originally published in Swedish at Uppsala in 1777, was translated from the German of by J. G. P. Moller by Susanna Dorothy Dixon (1757 – 1822). See Pam Perkins, Iceland and Eighteenth-Century Travel and Exploration [online], Iceland and Eighteenth-Century Travel and Exploration (2012): The English translation of Uno von Troil's Letters on Iceland–the only published account of Banks' expedition–foregrounds the matter-of-fact rather than the literary, addressing matters ranging from volcanoes to Icelandic cuisine and to the varieties of whales to be found in Icelandic waters, among many other topics–according to the presumed interests of the person being addressed. Yet that is not quite what one would expect if one judged by the book's reviews. The Monthly Review, for example, seemed to find von Troil's picture of Iceland less a matter of facts and figures than it was a vision of the exotic, the mysterious, and the dangerous–in a word, of the sublime. Describing Iceland as a fantastical place that "within a small and almost inconsiderable space freezes with the utmost rigour, and burns with all the violence of the most intense flame" (187-88), the reviewer presents a version of the country that might sound at least somewhat at odds with von Troil's deprecating assessment of it as a "dreary" land "so little favoured by nature" that "one is tempted to believe it impossible to be inhabited by any human creature" (25). Yet the reviewer's rhapsodic evocation of a sublimely elemental world of fire and ice is not as unjustified by von Troil's prose as one might be tempted to think if one looked simply at the headings of his letters or leafed through his accounts of matters such as Icelandic breeds of cattle or the economy of the in-shore fishery.

Keywords: topography travel prose


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