'SWINTON, Andrew' [pseudonym forWilliam THOMSON]. Travels into Norway, Denmark and Russia in the years 1788, 1790, and 1791. London: Robinson. 1792.
8vo. Contemporary calf, spine with raised bands, ruled in gilt and with red morroco lettering piece; pp. xxvii, 506, engraved frontispiece depicting Falconet's Peter the Great monument after a drawing by Thomson; head of spine and corners a little worn, the latter a little bumped; frontispiece and title-page with minor spotting, pp.264-266 with brown spots, otherwise very good; contemporary amorial bookplate of a member of the Duff family of Drummuir, Banff, Scotland to front pastedown.
First edition, uncommon, of this travelogue in epistolary form written by the colourful William Thomson (1746-1817) , author not only of voyage and travel literature, but also of biography and pamphlets under various pseudonyms, including Thomas Newte, Sergeant Donald Macleod, and, as here, Andrew Swinton.
Librarian to Thomas Hay, Earl of Kinnoull and Chancellor of the University of St. Andews, William Thomsom was encouraged to pursue a career in the church, with the promise of his own parish under Kinnoull's patronage. Having completed his theological studies at St Andrews, he was later ordained, this time as an assistant to James Porteous, Minister of Monivaird, Perthshire, but his personality could not be contained within the limited bounds of puritanism, what with promiscuous behaviour causing riot with his parisioners who were enraged by his erratic personality and controversial attitudes. He eventually resigned his post in 1778. Although his writing was predominantly concerned with fact, he also took a foray into the imaginative realm with his satiricial novel The Man in the Moon (1783), in which a regal lunar subject comes to earth and evaluates man's intellectual capacities as well as meets Britain's first foreign secretary, Charles Fox.
In the book's preface, Thomson claimed to have gained firsthand knowledge of military life and the wars of Catherine the Great through extensive travel in Scandinavia and Russia. However, it is more likely that he acquired this information secondhand, rather than through direct experience.
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