Stephens, John Lloyd
Stephens, John Lloyd,
1805–52, American author and traveler, b. Shrewsbury, N.J., grad. Columbia College, 1822. His travels (1834–36) in Europe, the Middle East, and Central America provided the material for a number of studies. By far the best are Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia, Petraea, and the Holy Land (1837) and Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland (1838). The last seven years of his life were devoted to planning the Panama RR.Bibliography
See A. and M. Sutton, Among the Maya Ruins (1967).
Stephens, John Lloyd
Born Nov. 28, 1805, in Shrewsbury, N.J.; died Oct. 12, 1852, in New York. American traveler and archaeologist.
From 1834 to 1836, Stephens journeyed through countries of Europe and the Near East. During two expeditions to Mexico and Central America (1839–41 and 1842), Stephens visited areas difficult of access and discovered monuments of ancient Indian civilizations that had developed long before the Spanish conquest. Stephens’ travel books, together with drawings by the English artist F. Catherwood, laid the foundation for the scholarly study of the Mayan civilization.
WORKS
Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land, 11th ed., vols. 1–2. New York, 1860.Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, vols. 1–2. New York, 1847–53.
Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, 12th ed., vols. 1–2. New York, 1867–71.