richard henry dana jr two years before the mast

A long trip around Cape Horn brought them to California. Many of his diary entries read 'The same.' The author's ship, The Pilgrim, was engaged in the hide trade. The moments of adventure and drama were interspersed between long periods of the boring, confined life of a sailor aboard ship. The life of a sailor was hard labor day and night. He decided to sign on as a jack tar sailor on a ship bound for California round the horn. The author was a student in Boston who developed problems with his eyes and could not pursue his studies. Instead it was a lively tale of travel and danger. This is an American classic that that I feared might be dull and monotonous. Published here for the first time in its entirety and with thorough annotation by Robert Lucid, the Journal makes available a wealth of material on the critical twenty-year period just prior to the Civil War.This is a true life adventure of two years of the life of an American sailor in the 1830's. Comparable in its vivid detail to Samuel Sewall’s eighteenth-century diary, the Journal provides graphic descriptions of Dana’s important legal cases, political and social activities and, in the process, one of the fullest portrayals available of the social life of a well-connected Boston family of the time. A world traveler, Dana was an astute observer and a man of catholic tastes who took particular pains in his description of men and women outside his own class. His Journal, which opens with an autobiographical sketch, consists of six volumes of diaries begun in 1841 and continued through 1860. Dana, a lawyer by profession, became a leading figure in the founding of both the Free Soil Party and the Republican Party, a champion of fugitive slaves, an intimate of Longfellow, Emerson, Charles Francis Adams the elder, and Charles Sumner, and, concomitantly, a much sought-after guest at the most important dinner tables in Boston. (1815–1882), widely known as the author of Two Years Before the Mast, was an important member of the legal, political, literary, and social worlds of Boston during the nineteenth century. They are also available to institutions in ten separate subject-area packages that reflect the entire spectrum of the Press’s catalog. The 2,800 titles in the “e-ditions” program can be purchased individually as PDF eBooks or as hardcover reprint (“print-on-demand”) editions via the “Available from De Gruyter” link above.

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Richard henry dana jr two years before the mast