De la démocratie en Amérique

Complete text of this foundational work of political history and political economy, published in four volumes.

The first two volumes are here in their first edition, published in January 1835: only 500 copies were printed of this first printing, which bears no edition statement. The book met with immediate success, exceeding the expectations of the publisher Gosselin, “who had probably not read the book,” as Tocqueville himself remarked, surprised at a result that surpassed his own hopes. New printings soon followed: three in 1835 (copies bearing an edition statement), two in 1836, a sixth (of 2,000 copies) in 1838, and a seventh in 1839. The following year, volumes III and IV were published, without Tocqueville revising the text of the first two volumes.

The complete set of four volumes subsequently went through a second edition, also in 1840, a third in 1841 and a fourth in 1842, all identical, until the Pagnerre edition of 1848, which is in part a new edition, being entirely revised and corrected and enlarged with an Avertissement and an Examen comparatif de la Démocratie aux États-Unis et en Suisse: it was during a two-month stay in Switzerland in the summer of 1836 that Tocqueville became interested in its institutions and political life.

Twelve years later, he drew on the notes taken during that stay for his review of Antoine-Elisée Cherbuliez’s De la démocratie en Suisse, a task entrusted to him by the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques and presented to that body on 15 January 1848.

A good copy in a rare, strictly contemporary binding, made at the time of the Pagnerre edition in order to bring the set into uniformity and complete the two volumes of the first edition.

Complete with the folding color map at the end of the second volume, in its first printing.

One of the Most Important Texts in Political Literature: “Democracy in America remains the best philosophical discussion of democracy, illustrated by the experience of the United States, up to the time when it was written, which can be found in any language. More than this is true. Notwithstanding the changes which have occurred in the material and social circumstances of the United States during the last sixty years [written in 1898], the consequent elimination of certain factors in the civilization of this country, and the introduction of new and unforeseen problems,—notwithstanding all this, the student of modern popular government must revert to Tocqueville. When his work appeared, democracy was to some an ‘ideal,’ a ‘brilliant dream;’ to others, ‘ruin, anarchy, robbery, murder.’ De Tocqueville wished to lessen the fears of the latter, the ardor of the former class. He treats Democracy as a fact” (Daniel Gilman, preface to the 1898 American edition).