[AGRICULTURE & HUSBANDRY] BUEL, J[esse]

The Cultivator, a Monthly Publication, Designed to Improve the Soil and the Mind. Volume VI [Mar-Dec, 1839]

Albany: Steam-Press of C. Van Benthuysen, 1839-40. Quarto (34cm). Contemporary half-calf over paper-covered boards; [3],208pp; inserted portrait frontispiece (of Buel); text illustrations. Binding scuffed, leather on spine somewhat dry, but structurally sound and internally quite clean but for some mild to moderate foxing, most pronounced on title page and first page of text; Very Good. Bound volume of twelve issues from March to December, 1839; monthly except for August and November, for which months two numbers were issued.

Buell (1778-1839) began his career as a printer and publisher; he was the proprietor of two partisan Democratic newspapers in the teens and twenties (the Ulster Plebeian and the Albany Argus). But his most important accomplishments were in the area of agricultural reform, beginning with the establishment of his own experimental farm near Albany in the early 1820s. By the end of that decade he had become a leading spokesman for "scientific methods" in agriculture; in addition to establishing a number of agricultural associations (including the New York State Agricultural Society in 1832), "...his most important accomplishment was to establish a career as an influential agricultural writer. He set the Albany Cultivator on a firm footing as one of the leading journals of its day...he included many original contributions in its pages, enlisting the knowledge of hundreds of agents and correspondents..." [ANB]. The Cultivator ran from 1834 to 1865; following Buel's death in 1839 it merged with Luther Tucker's The Gennesseean.

Price: $150.00

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