antiquarian bookseller - Peter Harrington

Peter Harrington Antiquarian Bookseller
136.(SMET, Pierre-Jean de)
CHITTENDEN, Hiram
Martin, & Alfred Talbot
Richardson (eds).
Life, Letters and Travels of Father
Pierre-Jean De Smet, S.J. 1801-
1873. Missionary Labors and
Adventures among the Wild Tribes
of the North American Indians,
Embracing Minute Description of
their Manners, Customs, Games,
Modes of Warfare and Torture,
Legends, Traditions. Edited from the
Original Unpublished Manuscript,
Journals, Letter Books and from
his Printed Works with Historical,
Geographical, Ethnological and
other Notes; Also a Life of Father De
Smet.
New York, Francis P. Harper, 1905 [40114] £575
4 volumes, 8vo. Original dark green vertical fine-ribbed cloth,
title gilt to spines. Frontispiece to each and 12 other plates,
folding map in end-pocket to Volume IV. Hinges of vols. I & IV
cracking, indistinct splash mark to upper board of vol. IV, but
overall a very good set.
FIRST EDITION. The Jesuit Father De Smet’s Life provides
an overview of his life and travels among Western Indian
tribes from 1838–70. His journals and notes contain
some of the earliest records of the life and customs of
tribal life in the Northwest.
Howes C392; Howgego S29.
137.STEDMAN, John Gabriel.
Narrative of a five years’ expedition,
against the Revolted Negroes of
Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild
Coast of South America; from the
year 1772, to 1777: elucidating
the History of that Country, and
describing its Productions, Viz.
Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Reptiles,
Trees, Shrubs, Fruits, & Roots; with
an account of the Indians of Guiana,
& Negroes of Guinea … illustrated
with 80 elegant Engravings, from
drawings made by the Author.
London, for J. Johnson, & J. Edwards, 1796 [32103] £4500
2 volumes, 4to (264 × 210 mm). 8pp. list of subscribers, 2pp.
errata. Contemporary half calf, black morocco labels, thickand-thin
gilt rules either side of raised bands, marbled boards.
Engraved titles with integral vignettes, frontispiece and 80
plates and maps (including 16 by William Blake, 3 folding
maps, one folding aquatint plate). Lightly rubbed, a little very
light marginal spotting to plates, an excellent copy.
FIRST EDITION of one of the most detailed descriptions
ever written of an 18th-century slave plantation society,
describing the full panorama of colonial life – the
mistreatment of slaves by sadistic masters, the courage of
the rebels in battle, the daily lives of Indian and African
slaves, and exotic flora and fauna. John Gabriel Stedman
(1744–1797), a soldier of Scottish-Dutch descent,
responded to a call for volunteers to put down a slave
rebellion in the wealthy South American colony of Surinam.
He wrote from a position of unusually close engagement,
having entered a form of marriage soon after his arrival
with Joanna, a 15-year-old mixed-race slave, who
bore him a son. Belying his radical reputation, Johnson
employed a professional editor to tone down Stedman’s
antislavery views, but the Narrative still had massive
contemporary impact. Upon its publication the Critical
Review observed that ‘we have never opened any work
which is so admirably calculated to excite the most heart-
felt abhorrence and detestation of that grossest assault
on human nature – domestic slavery’ (January 1797, 53).
Among the engravers was William Blake, “responsible for
sixteen plates that ‘have long been recognized as among
the best executed and most generally interesting of all his
journeyman work’ (Keynes, 98). Each of Blake’s arresting
engravings successfully blends his own inner vision with
Stedman’s. The often-reproduced slave tortures (pl. 11,
35, 71) convey extraordinary power and pathos, the
wonderfully humanoid monkeys and the skinning of the
giant anaconda (pl. 18, 42, 19) sprightly humour, and his
emblematic representation of Europe Supported by Africa
& America (pl. 80) demure but unmistakable sensuality”
(ODNB).
138.WALLACE, Alfred W.
A Narrative of Travels on the
Amazon and Rio Negro, with an
Account of the Native Tribes, and
Observations on the Climate,
Geology, and Natural History of the
Amazon Valley.
London, Reeve and Co., 1853 [39385] £2250
8vo. (228 × 146mm). Slightly later half morocco on marbled
boards, title gilt to spine, pomegranate devices gilt to the
compartments. Tinted lithographic frontispiece, 8 plates,
folding table and a map. Ex-Repton School library with
bookplate to the front pastedown and ink stamp to the
title page, some transference to margin of frontispiece,
some marginal foxing and browning, but overall very good,
rebacked with the original spine laid down.
FIRST EDITION. An entirely autodidact naturalist, inspired
by Edwards’s Voyage up the River Amazon, Wallace set
off in 1848 for the Amazon with Walter Henry Bates, an
enthusiastic entomologist, “Apart from meeting their
immediate goal of earning a living through natural
history collecting, Wallace and Bates had a broader
purpose for travelling to the Amazon: solving the mystery
of the causes of organic evolution. Though Wallace had
unreservedly embraced the notion of social progress
from his early teens and apparently leaned toward
a uniformitarianism-based but progressive view of
change in physical nature even before turning twenty,
he had not been a convert to biological evolution until
he read Robert Chambers’s controversial, anonymously
published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
about 1845, the year it was published. That one might
demonstrate the fact of evolution through a detailed
tracing out of individual phylogenies over time and
space was apparent to him early on, and the Amazon
was to afford a natural laboratory to this end” (ODNB).
Wallace followed this with a trip to the Malay Archipelago
and in 1855 his paper “On the Law which has regulated
the Introduction of New Species” written whilst he was
at Sarawak was noticed by Lyell who drew it to Darwin’s
attention. The result was a joint presentation of Wallace
Catalogue 57: Travel Section 3: The Americas, Greenland and the Arctic
and Darwin’s findings on natural selection at the Linnaean
Society in 1858. An important and uncommon work.
Borba de Moraes, p. 933
139.WATERTON, Charles.
Wanderings in South America, the
North-West of the United States,
and the Antilles, in the Years
1812, 1816, 1820, and 1824. With
Original Instructions for the Perfect
Preservation of Birds, &c. for
Cabinets of Natural History.
London, J. Mawman, 1825 [38006] £450
4to. (282 × 212 mm). Engraved frontispiece of a “Nondescript”.
Armorial bookplate of John Selwin to front pastedown.
Frontispiece foxed as usual and slightly off-set onto title page,
a little scattered foxing, but on the whole a very good copy
in contemporary tan calf with dark green morocco lettering
piece, a little rubbed, upper joint slightly cracked, head-cap
chipped,.
FIRST EDITION. An extremely engaging and consequently
highly popular travel narrative, including the pursuit of
samples of curare in Dutch Guiana and the hunt for El
Dorado. Probably most remarked upon is the frontispiece
of a “Nondescript”, a “human face based on that of a red
monkey” (ODNB) which had been modelled employing
the Waterton Method of taxidermy.
Howes W158; Sabin 102094.
140.WHYMPER, Edward.
Travels Amongst the Great Andes of
the Equator.
London, John Murray, 1892 [23432] £300
4to. Original green cloth, bevelled boards, spine lettered in
gilt, gilt decorative borders at top and bottom of front cover
running onto spine and in blind on rear cover, brown coated
endpapers, uncut edges. Frontispiece, 19 plates, 4 maps (1
folding map in pocket at end), and illustrations in the text. A
little wear and fading to cloth but overall a very good copy.
FIRST EDITION of what is often considered Whymper’s
magnum opus. Whymper “travelled in 1879–80 to Ecuador
with his former Matterhorn rival J. A. Carrel and the
latter’s cousin Louis Carrel, to test the physiological effects
of low pressure at high altitudes and the phenomenon
of ‘mountain sickness’. They twice climbed Chimborazo
(20,498 feet), the highest mountain in Ecuador, and other
peaks including Cotopaxi (19,613 feet), an active volcano.
Whymper also surveyed the area and collected over
8000 zoological and botanical specimens” (ODNB). The
book combines a popular account of his ascents with his
detailed scientific observations.
141.WORTLEY, Lady
Emmeline Stuart.
Travels in the United States, etc.
during 1849 and 1850.
London, Richard Bentley, 1851 [38029] £750
3 volumes, 8vo. Some browning, particularly to the title
pages, small ink stamps of the NSW Parliamentary Library to
the title pages, but in all other respects a very nice set in the
original blue embossed cloth, titles gilt to spines, very light
shelf-wear.
FIRST EDITION. A prolific poet, friend of Mary Shelley,
Richard Monckton Milnes and Tennyson, and a prodigious
traveller. Following the death of her husband and
youngest son in 1844 she began undertaking a series
of “increasingly punishing” journeys. In 1849–50 she
travelled down through America, into Mexico, across
Panama and down to Peru, accompanied by her 12-yearold
daughter Victoria, who also published an account of
her experiences. Lady Wortley died whilst on a trip across
the Middle East in 1855.