Jonathan Carver

author

Jonathan Carver

1710–1780

Best known for a vivid account of his travels in the Upper Mississippi and Great Lakes region, this colonial American explorer helped shape how 18th-century readers imagined the interior of North America. His writing mixed firsthand observation, mapping, and adventure at a moment when the continent was still little known to British audiences.

2 Audiobooks

A treatise on the culture of the tobacco plant with the manner in which it is usually cured Adapted to northern climates, and designed for the use of the landholders of Great-Britain.

A treatise on the culture of the tobacco plant with the manner in which it is usually cured Adapted to northern climates, and designed for the use of the landholders of Great-Britain.

by Jonathan Carver

Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America, in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768

Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America, in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768

by Jonathan Carver

About the author

Born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, in 1710, he later lived in Connecticut and served in the colonial forces during the French and Indian War, rising to the rank of captain. He is remembered chiefly as an explorer, mapmaker, and writer whose journeys took him through parts of the northern Mississippi Valley and western Great Lakes.

In 1766–1768, he traveled widely in the interior of North America and recorded what he saw of the landscape, trade routes, and Native nations he encountered. Those travels became the basis for Travels through America in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768, published in London in 1778 and widely read in its day.

His reputation has lasted because his book offered many readers one of their earliest detailed English-language pictures of that region. He died in London in 1780, leaving behind a legacy tied both to exploration and to the powerful influence of travel writing.