America 1860

He was just twenty four years old when Englishman & entomologist Richard Harper Stretch stepped on to the boat at Liverpool and set sail for America on the 14th January 1860. He was going, he wrote, to 'investigate the manners and the institutions of our American Bretheren'. With him he carried his considerable luggage, a trusty shot gun, specimen jars and many preconceptions. Always to hand was a new, hard backed book in which to write about the things that he found, the places he saw and the people he met along the way. The diary that he wrote about his journey languished in obscurity until his nephew's granddaughter passed away. Now transcribed and annotated, with illustrations taken from RHS's own margin sketches, it provides a fascinating insight into America on the brink of Civil War and the mind of a travelling European, at large in a vast new continent.