Description

“I have written until my paper is exhausted, my eyes bedimmed, and my imagination haunted by racks, wheels, and guillotines dyed in human gore.” – page 199

• Full title: “Letters Written in France, to a Friend in London, Between the Month of November 1794, and the Month of May 1795. By Major Tench, of the Marines, Late of His Majesty’s Ship Alexander.”
• Candid & readable account of this Englishman’s wartime capture & forced stay in a French village during the French Revolution
• British Marine Officer, author & astute observationalist Watkin Tench [1758?–1833] led a varied & dramatic life, involving a number of key historical events of his era. Joining the Marine Corps as a teen, he served in the war for American independence, including three months as a prisoner of war. In 1788 he landed in Botany Bay as part of the First Fleet to Australia. During his three years in the new settlement he was a keen explorer & chronicler, including of the Indigenous population, recording & later publishing these significant early observations.
  Tench returned to England but was soon at sea again with the outbreak of war with France. In November 1794 he commenced another stint as a prisoner of war, mostly in the French town of Quimper, & spent these 6 months in “study of the effects of the revolution in that remote corner of Brittany”. These Letters are the result. [Australian Dictionary of Biography]
• First Edition [J. Johnson, London, 1796]; Octavo; iv, 224 pages; modern rebind & endpapers, decorated papered boards, leather & gilt spine label, pages lightly wrinkled throughout, small mark to title page, pale mark to top edge, corner crease to preface page, 1cm tear to page 17, an excellent copy