Pennant's Travels: A Tour in Scotland. MDCCLXIX (Part 1); A Tour in Scotland. MDCCLXIX (Part 2); A Tour in Scotland. MDCCLXXII; A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides; A Tour in Wales MDCCLXXIII; Touring to Snowdon; Touring from Chester to London. (A Collection of Six Works)

Thomas Pennant; Moses Griffith

London: Printed for Benjamin White; John Monk; Henry Hughes; 1776 - 1782

[An Illustrated Tour of 18th century Britain]  6 volume set. Quartos, 24 x 18 cm.  Handsomely bound in uniform, contemporary polished calf.  6 gilt spine compartments. Minor cracks to joints. Includes fold out map and illustrations.  Detailed list of Contents: v.1. A Tour in Scotland. 1769, B. White, 1776. Folding engraved map at front, engraved title with vignette, 42 engraved plates. 4th ed; v.2. A Tour in Scotland. 1772, B. White, 1776. Folding engraved map at front, engraved title with vignette, 47 engraved plates; v.3. A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides. John Monk, 1774. Engraved title with vignette, 44 engraved plates; v.4. A Tour in Wales. 1773, H. Hughes, 1778. Engraved title with vignette, 26 engraved plates; v.5. Touring to Snowdon. H. Hughes, 1781. Engraved title with vignette, 36 engraved plates, 2 engraved vignettes in text; v.6. Touring from Chester to London. B. White, 1782. Engraved title with vignette, 22 engraved plates. 

Thomas Pennant, 1726-1798, was a Welsh naturalist, traveler, zoologist, and antiquarian.  Pennant is most known for his works on British Zoology and the History of Quadrupeds.  For his contributions to natural science he was admitted to the Royal Society.  His travel books predated Samuel Johnson's and influenced his writing.  Significantly, Pennant's travels helped popularize Scotland to British travelers and provide a valuable insight into the land during this period.  

"Pennant's travels and natural history are distinguished by his personal energy, a keen observational sense, and by methodological organization and attention to facts. In such ways, and in his friendship and widespread correspondence with others of like interests throughout Britain and Europe, he may be said to exemplify those gentleman scholars of nature in the later eighteenth century whose interests in natural knowledge aimed at national improvement through intellectual enquiry."  - DNB.  In 1771 Pennant published his 'Tour in Scotland', describing the journey made by him in 1769. He says he had 'the hardihood to venture on a journey to the remotest part of North Britain,' of which he brought home an account so favourable that 'it has ever since been inondee with southern visitors'. Starting from Chester on 26 June 1769, Pennant visited the Fern Islands off the Northumbrian coast, and noted many species of sea-fowl that resorted thither. He made nearly the circuit of the mainland of Scotland, observing manners and customs and natural history. On this occasion, as on all subsequent tours, he journeyed on horseback, and kept an elaborate journal. The success of the 'Tour in Scotland' led to his undertaking a second Scottish journey, beginning on 18 May 1772. He visited the English lakes, proceeded to the Hebrides, and was presented with the freedom of Edinburgh. Moses Griffith [q. v.], the Welsh artist, attended him on this journey (as also on his later tours), making sketches and drawings, afterwards reproduced in Pennant's published 'Tours.' Pennant made tours in various parts of England, including Northamptonshire (1774), Warwickshire (1776), Kent (1777), Cornwall (1787). As the outcome of several journeys in Wales he published his 'Tour in Wales,' the first volume appearing in 1778." - Warwick William Wroth, DNB, v.44, p. 320-322.