author

Adlard Welby

A 19th-century English traveler and landowner, remembered for a lively account of North America in 1819 and 1820. His journals offer a curious outsider’s view of the young United States and Canada at a moment of rapid change.

1 Audiobook

Faux's Memorable Days in America, 1819-20; and Welby's Visit to North America, 1819-20, part 2 (1820)

Faux's Memorable Days in America, 1819-20; and Welby's Visit to North America, 1819-20, part 2 (1820)

by W. (William) Faux, Adlard Welby

About the author

Best known for A Visit to North America and the English Settlements in Illinois, with a Winter Residence at Philadelphia, this English writer recorded his travels through the United States and Canada in 1819 and 1820. His observations were later preserved in reprints and public-domain editions, which helped keep his travel writing available to modern readers.

Academic research on his journals identifies him as a Lincolnshire landowner who lived from 1776 to 1861. Those journals, covering later periods of his life as well, suggest a habitual observer who wrote not just about long-distance travel but also about the world immediately around him.

Today, he is mainly read for the texture of his firsthand impressions: practical, personal, and often revealing about how Britain and North America looked to one another in the early 19th century.