Author: Pennant, Thomas:
Title: A Tour in Scotland; MDCCLXIX.
Description: Warrington: printed by W. Eyres, 1774. 1774. Third edition. 8vo., pp. viii, 316; viii, 172 + 18 plates to the first part and 21 plates to the second part. Additional engraved title-page with vignette dated 1774, followed by printed title-page dated 1771. Title-page to 'Additions to the 4to Edition […]' dated 1774 after p.316. Some illustrations in the text. Occasional small ink spots, eider duck plate neatly repaired, 2G8 bottom corner of fore-edge margin lost not affecting text. Modern half calf olive green, raised bands and black gilt labels to spine, marbled boards, edges very lightly sprinkled blue, endpapers renewed. A little rubbed, a few light scuffs to spine, very good. To the second, printed title an ownership inscription possibly of C. Stuart (the end of the surname trimmed) dated 28th December 17(??). 'In 1769 Pennant undertook a tour of Scotland, chiefly of the highlands, a region then little known by outsiders yet of interest for its natural history. He again drew upon local specialist knowledge— men such as the Revd Dr John Walker, who had travelled extensively in the highlands and Hebrides in 1764 and 1766, and, in Aberdeen, the natural historian David Skene, who showed Pennant his cabinet of natural history and advised him on zoological and botanical specimens. Pennant's A Tour in Scotland, 1769, was published in 1771. It is of interest for its descriptions andfor its method: Pennant circulated 'Queries, addressed to the Gentlemen and Clergy of North-Britain' [Scotland] with standard questions about natural history and the past and present state of the parish in order to allow locals to give 'a fuller and more satisfactory Account of their Country, than it is the Power of a Stranger and transient Visitant to give' (Pennant, Tour in Scotland, 287). In that regard Pennant has much in common with the earlier use of circulated queries by natural philosophers such as Robert Boyle and, in Scotland, by the natural historian and geographer Sir Robert Sibbald, and Pennant importantly prefigures the parish-based assessment of Scotland published by Sir John Sinclair in the 1790s.' (Withers, ODNB)

Keywords: Early Printing (to c.1800, all subjects);British & Irish History & Topography


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