antiquarian bookseller - Peter Harrington

42. FONTANE, Marius.
Chromolithographic record
of the opening of the Suez Canal
Voyage Pittoresque a travers
l’Isthme de Suez.
Paris: Paul Dupont & E. Lachaud, [c. 1870] [39461] £5000
Elephant folio. Contemporary quarter calf, marbled boards
and endpapers. With the chromolithograph map and 25 fine
chromolithograph plates of views by Eugene Ciceri after Riou.
Some slight marginal dampstaining, occasional foxing to text,
a few tissue guards torn or creased. A good sound copy, the
plates fresh and clean.
FIRST EDITION, one of only 500 copies published,
issued to mark the official opening of the Suez Canal.
Fontane, who was secretarary to de Lesseps, gives
the lion’s share of the credit for the Canal to him. This
insulted Ismail Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt, who removed
the portrait frontispiece of de Lesseps, the preface
and the last six gatherings (including the last 6 plates
belonging to them) from the 200 copies reserved for
him. Our copy does not have the portrait of de Lesseps
but does have the Preface and the last six gatherings.
“The formal opening of the canal was celebrated in
November 1869. On the 16th there was an inaugural
ceremony at Port Said, and next day 68 vessels of various
nationalities, headed by the Aigle with the empress
Eugenie on board, began the passage reaching Ismailia
(Lake Timsa) the same day. On the 19th they continued
their journey to the Bitter Lakes, and on the 20th they
arrived at Suez. Immediately afterwards regular traffic
began” (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
Blackmer 611; Hilmy I, p. 235.
43. GIANGOLINO, Carlo.
Hedengrafia, overo Descrittione del
Paradiso Terrestre …
Messina, Jacopo Mattei, 1649 [39509] £8500
Folio (300 × 205mm). Mottled calf by Roger de Coverley,
French fillet gilt panel to the boards, red morocco label, spine
gilt in compartments with floral and arabesque tools, gilt
edges Engraved emblematic title page, portrait, and doublepage
engraved map of the Middle East, ten copper-engraved
illustrations of ancient scripts. Light browning, worm trail
through the tail margin costing the occasional character or
part character of the catch-words and last line of text, lacquer
on the boards cracklured and rubbed at the extremities, but
still handsome.
FIRST EDITION. Born in Fano, Giangolino gained
considerable fame as court geographer in Sicily, acting as
tutor to the future Philip IV of Spain. For many years he
held the position of “pubblico lettore” or public lecturer
in cosmography at the ancient University of Messina, the
present work being dedicated to the Senate of the city,
and published a number of geopolitical works on the
Ottoman Empire. In Hedengrafia Giangolino sets out an
ancient and modern geography of the Middle East taking
in Arabia, Turkey and as far as the borders of modern
day Afghanistan, including details of the cities and their
inhabitants, languages, costumes and customs, as well as
the natural history of the region. Incorporating philology
and Biblical exegesis, he attempts accurately to locate and
describe the Garden of Eden, the “Earthly Paradise”. The
splendid double-page map with the arms of the Senators
of Messina along the top is credited to Giangolino himself,
engraved by the Messinan craftsman, Placido Donia.
Uncommon: COPAC has BL only for this work, OCLC has
just three copies of this edition – two at the University
of California and one at the Bavarian State Library
– and a single copy of a later edition, 1654, at Dartmouth
College. KVK locates a further copy in Germany at the
Herzog-August-Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, one in the
National Library of Spain and unsurprisingly six in Italian
institutions. No copy at auction in the last twenty years.
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