FOWLER, George. The Wandering Philanthropist; or, Lettres from a Chinese. Written during his residence in the United States. Philadelphia: Bartholomew Graves, 1810. Sabin 25304. 12mo (170 x 101mm). (Toning and some spots, dampstain at end, a few sheets with faint impression.) Contemporary calf (rebacked preserving spine panel and pastedowns, without rear endpaper); modern cloth box. Provenance: Miss E. Townsend (school prize inscription dated 1820, Washington).

[KNAPP, Samuel Lorenzo (1783-1838).] Extracts from a Journal of Travels in North America, consisting of an Account of Boston and its Vicinity by Ali Bey. Boston: Thomas Badger, 1818. Sabin 38071; Howes K-210. Octavo (195 x 121mm). (Title toned, some offsetting of ink.) Contemporary boards, untrimmed (neatly rebacked); modern cloth box.

First editions of two rare and curious fictions, both in contemporary bindings, from the perspectives of "foreigners" visiting America. Both works riff on Samuel Johnson's Rasselas and Washington Irving's "Mustapha Rub-a-Dub Keli Khan" from Salmagundi, purporting to be based on autograph manuscripts found and edited by the author. Fowler's work takes the form of letters written by a Chinese traveler. He generally provides a gently ironic view of American life, but has particularly harsh words for the treatment of enslaved people in the American south, describing it as "an unbounded exercise of tyranny by the one [race] over the other." Knapp's book is the fictional travelogue of an Ottoman spy in America, who travels disguised as a Frenchman named Monsieur Desaleurs. The protagonist's true name, Ali Bey, is a reference to the pseudonym of the Spanish explorer-spy Domingo Francisco Jorge Badía y Leblich who traveled through the Ottoman Empire in disguise as a Muslim. Both works are rare at auction, with Fowler last recorded in 1924 and Knapp in 1955.