antiquarian bookseller - Peter Harrington

Peter Harrington Antiquarian Bookseller
23. ALLDRIDGE, Thomas
Joshua.
1
The Sherbro and its Hinterland.
London, Macmillan & Co., 1901 [2310] £245
Large 8vo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered gilt, two West
African carved figures gilt on front cover, edges uncut and
partly unopened. Folding map and coloured map in pocket
at end, portrait frontispiece and 76 photographic plates.
Extremities rubbed, inner hinges just cracked but holding,
light age-toning to contents, an excellent copy.
FIRST EDITION, Presentation Copy, inscribed “With the
Author’s Compliments. October 1901”. This is the first of
Alldridge’s two published studies of Sierra Leone, which
had been a British Crown Colony since 1808.
24. [BARTLETT, W. H., &
others] CARNE, John.
Syria, The Holy Land, Asia Minor,
&c. Illustrated. In a series of
views drawn from nature by W. H.
Bartlett, William Purser, &c. with
descriptions of the plates by John
Carne, Esq. Author of “Letters from
the East.”
Fisher, Son, & Co.; London, Paris, & America, [1836–8] [32357]
£1250
3 volumes bound in 2, 4to (272 × 210 mm). Nineteenthcentury
maroon hard-grain half morocco, spines lettered gilt
in two compartments, others richly gilt, dated at foot, marbled
boards, cream endpapers, gilt edges. 2 maps, 3 engraved title
pages, and 117 steel-engraved views by W. H. Bartlett, William
Purser, Thomas Allom and others. Irish armorial bookplates of
R. La Touche, Jr. and Sir Maurice Fitzgerald. Rubbed in places,
some light foxing to plates as usual, chiefly marginal, a very
good copy.
FIRST EDITION. Vol. 3 is illustrated by W. H. Bartlett and
Thomas Allom. The son of a banker, Carne preferred travel
to his father’s choice of career and visited the holy places
in 1821, visiting Constantinople, Greece, the Levant, Egypt
and Palestine. His work and his talents as a raconteur
brought him the friendship of Scott, Southey, Campbell,
Lockhart, Jerdan, and other men of letters. “His books
were well reviewed at the time for their content and style”
(ODNB).
Atabey 199; Blackmer 291.
25. BARTLETT, W. H.
The Nile Boat; Or, Glimpses Of The
Land Of Egypt.
London, Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Co., 1852 [37323] £350
8vo. Steel-engraved frontispiece, half-title vignette and 31
plates, one of them folding, two maps, and 17 wood-engraved
vignettes to the text. Gift inscription to the front free endpaper,
some foxing throughout, heavy to the prelims., but overall
very good in contemporary red half pebble-grained morocco
on marbled boards, spine ornately gilt in compartments, gilt
edges, a little rubbed.
Third Edition.
26. BELL, Gertrude
Lowthian.
Amurath to Amurath.
London, William Heinemann, 1911 [39988] £875
8vo. Original sand pictorial cloth. Frontispiece and numerous
other plates. Somewhat browned, as often, slight dampstaining
in the top margin, hinges tender, cloth a little rubbed
at the extremities, spine tanned, but a better than average
copy of this title.
FIRST EDITION. Account of Bell’s expedition of 1909 “
… to survey the Roman and Byzantine fortresses on the
banks of the Euphrates in Mesopotamia. This has been
regarded as her most important journey of exploration,
covering territory previously unfamiliar to westerners.
Starting from Aleppo she reached the palace of Ukhaidir
in March 1909, returning by way of Baghdad and Mosul
to Asia Minor. Her account of her journey [is]one of her
most famous books … She described it as ‘the attempt
to record the daily life, the speech of those who had
inherited the empty ground where empires had risen and
expired’” (ODNB).
27. BRUCE, James.
Travels to Discover the Source of the
Nile in the years 1768, 1769, 1770,
1771, 1772, & 1773. The second
edition, corrected and enlarged.
To which is prefixed, A Life of the
Author.
Edinburgh, by James Ballantyne, for Archibald Constable and Co. and
Manners and Miller, Edinburgh; and Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme,
London, 1805 [32514] £2000
7 volumes, 8vo, and plate volume, 4to. Text volumes
uniformly bound in early 20th-century brown half calf by
Bayntuns of Bath, spines lettered gilt and with gilt floral tools
in compartments, cloth sides, yellow edges; the plate volume
in contemporary calf, covers with thick-and-thin gilt rules,
neatly rebacked. Portrait frontispiece; 79 plates, 3 large folding
maps. Text volumes with modern bookplates of Thomas S.
Standish, Wigan; plate volume with early armorial bookplate
of John Lothian. Slight
foxing at beginning
and end of text, a
very good set. With
an early autograph
letter concerning
Bruce loosely
inserted in vol. I.
Second Edition.
“Few books of
equal compass
are equally
e n t e r t a i n i n g ;
and few such
monuments exist
of the energy and
enterprise of a
single traveller”
( D N B ) .
Bruce arrived in Alexandria in 1768 having determined
to discover the source of the Nile, which he believed to
be in Abyssinia. He reached Kossier via Cairo and Thebes
where he embarked in the dress of a Turkish sailor for
Jidda. He eventually reached Gondar in Abyssinia in
1770 where his linguistic skills, resourcefulness and
courage made a fine impression, especially upon the
Negus and Ras Michael. He stayed there for two years
before finally reaching the source of the Blue Nile, and
in 1771 he also found its confluence with the White Nile
having surmounted numerous difficulties. Bruce’s Travels
is particularly important for its portrayal of Abyssinia,
little-known to his contemporaries, for its literary merits
and for the final volume on natural history, in spite of
the incredulity with which his account was originally
received. This incredulity is reflected in a discussion about
Bruce that Boswell records took place with Doctor Johnson
one April evening in 1775: “he told me that he had been
in the company of a gentleman whose extraordinary
travels had been the subject of conversation. But I found
he had not listened to him
with that full confidence,
without which there is
little satisfaction in the
society of travellers.” But
Bruce holds his place in
the first rank of African
travellers: “he will always
remain the poet, and his
work the epic, of African
travel” (DNB).
Blackmer 221.
Peter Harrington
antiquarian bookseller
Catalogue 57: Travel
Section 1:
World Voyages & Compilations
Items 1-22, pages 2-17
Section 2:
Africa and the Middle East
to Persia
Items 23-95; pages 18-53
Section 3:
The Americas, Greenland and the
Arctic
Items 96-141; pages 54-77
Section 4:
Asia including Russia
Items 142-211; pages 78-105
Section 5:
Australia and Antarctica
Items 212-232; pages 106-117
Section 6:
Europe, including Constantinople
Items 233-276; pages 118-139
Section 7:
Mapping, Navigation and Naval
History
Items 277-331; pages 140-169
Index; pages 170-171
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