Embossed pattern red cloth binding with gilt decoration and title on the spine.

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Cloth. Condition: Very Good. Not Stated (illustrator). A beautifully illustrated new edition of this collection of tales from Willis’ journey across Europe. New edition with additions. Illustrated with portrait frontispiece, vignette title, and three plates. Collated complete. Travel writings from across Europe, with details of Paris, Nice, Florence, Naples, Rome, Pisa, Vienna, Greece, Austria and the Alps, Switzerland, Paris, London, Edinburgh, The Highlands, and more. Written by Nathaniel Parker Willis, an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable writers including Edgar Allan Poe. In the original full red cloth binding. Externally, smart with light shelf wear and minor rubbing to the extremities. Internally, firmly bound. Pages are very bright and clean with the odd spot. Light scattered spotting to the endpapers. Very Good. book.

Nathaniel Parker Willis (January 20, 1806 – January 20, 1867), also known as N. P. Willis, was an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. His brother was the composer Richard Storrs Willis and his sister Sara wrote under the name Fanny Fern. Harriet Jacobs wrote her autobiography while being employed as his children’s nurse.

Born in Portland, Maine, Willis came from a family of publishers. His grandfather Nathaniel Willis owned newspapers in Massachusetts and Virginia, and his father Nathaniel Willis was the founder of Youth’s Companion, the first newspaper specifically for children. Willis developed an interest in literature while attending Yale College and began publishing poetry. After graduation, he worked as an overseas correspondent for the New York Mirror. He eventually moved to New York and began to build his literary reputation. Working with multiple publications, he was earning about $100 per article and between $5,000 and $10,000 per year. In 1846, he started his own publication, the Home Journal, which was eventually renamed Town & Country. Shortly after, Willis moved to a home on the Hudson River where he lived a semi-retired life until his death in 1867.

Willis embedded his own personality into his writing and addressed his readers personally, specifically in his travel writings, so that his reputation was built in part because of his character. Critics, including his sister in her novel Ruth Hall, occasionally described him as being effeminate and Europeanized. Willis also published several poems, tales, and a play. Despite his intense popularity for a time, at his death Willis was nearly forgotten.