Nicholas Biddle in Greece: The Journals and Letters of 1806

Biddle, Nicholas

ISBN 10: 0271009144 / ISBN 13: 9780271009148

Published by Penn State University Press, 1993

About this Item

Gut/Very good: Buch bzw. Schutzumschlag mit wenigen Gebrauchsspuren an Einband, Schutzumschlag oder Seiten. / Describes a book or dust jacket that does show some signs of wear on either the binding, dust jacket or pages.

Seller Inventory # M00271009144-V

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Nicholas Biddle in Greece: The Journals and Letters of 1806
• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0271009144
• ISBN 13: 9780271009148
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: very good

About this title

Synopsis

Nicholas Biddle (1786–1844) was a noted politician and financier in early nineteenth-century America. At eighteen, he went to Europe as the secretary of the American minister to France. He also made the acquaintance of James Monroe when Monroe was the American ambassador to London. He was later elected to the state legislature and senate of Pennsylvania. Ultimately he became a director and then the president of the Bank of the United States.

In the course of a sojourn to Europe, Biddle sailed to Greece, then a part of the Ottoman Empire. Half of the journal he kept on the trip has only recently been discovered, and the other half is known to only a few people because it is still in private hands. Taken together, these two journals (plus the four extant letters that Biddle wrote to his family in Philadelphia) are a mine of information about the formative influences on his career, about the politics and personalities of Napoleon's Europe, about the condition of Greece and its ancient monuments under the Turkocratia, and even about the American naval war against the Barbary pirates. Despite being written by a twenty-year old, these journals are remarkable for their literary quality and their general liveliness. Perhaps because they were not written to be published, they have a freshness and honesty lacking in more formal works of travel. McNeal's extensive introduction illuminates the early nineteenth-century background of Biddle's journals.

About the Author

While preparing this book, R. A. McNeal was Visiting Associate Professor of Classics at Franklin and Marshall College and is the author of Law and Rhetoric in the Crito (1992).