A desirable coloured copy of this uncommon account.
“Maria Graham was not only a writer of genuine talent, but also an artist of considerable aptitude” (Borba). Jane Robinson adds, “She was a unique traveller - a born sailor and one of the first Englishwomen to write of life in South America …”
The daughter of rear-admiral George Dundas, Maria Graham set out for South America in 1821 on board H.M. Frigate Doris, her husband Capt. Thomas Graham in command. They reached Brazil at a time of tremendous constitutional upheaval as the country moved from being a dependency of Portugal to an independent nation. Landing first at Pernambuco, where they found considerable nationalist feeling, the Grahams went on to Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, which they found to be “more like an European city”.
Due to the extreme heat and the ill-health of some of the crew, the Doris pressed South round Cape Horn, where snow and storms hampered her progress, and where Capt. Graham succumbed to the fever himself. His wife disembarked at Valparaiso and after several months, during which she survived the great earthquake of 1822, returned to Rio de Janeiro, taking the post of governess to Donna Maria, later Queen of Portugal.
Most plates are after drawings done by Graham herself, and include views of Brazilian slave markets and of the remarkable woman soldier Maria Quitéria, a Brazilian national icon who dressed as a man to fight in the War of Independence.
Mrs. Graham returned to England in 1823, remarrying some four years later, and as Lady Calcott published numerous works including Little Arthur’s History of England (1835). She died in 1842 and is buried at Kensal Green.
This work is much scarcer than her Journal of a Residence in Chile During the Year 1822 … (London, 1824).
Abbey, 708 (uncoloured); Borba, p374; Robinson (Wayward Women), pp.44-46; Sabin, 28235.
