American Scenery, Vol. 1

Before photography, Americans discovered their landscape through prints and prose. This volume, from 1840, offers that rare thing: a glimpse of eastern America as it appeared when nature was still being measured against the sublime. Nathaniel Parker Willis, the most famous travel writer of his era, guides readers through engravings of New England and New York sites that would become foundational images in American consciousness. Here are the White Mountains before they became a tourist destination, the Hudson Valley before the estate age, the cataracts and cliffs that Americans of the 1840s traveled weeks to see. Each engraving is paired with a description that captures what it meant to stand before these landscapes in an age when seeing them was still an act of discovery. The book documents the moment Americans began to see their own land as something worthy of framing, preserving, and returning to.