Travel

Contact Jonathan Harrison, Alex Day or Andrea Mazzocchi

We stock Western books in European languages, generally – but not exclusively – published before circa 1850. We are especially interested in early travel accounts – from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries – in all areas beyond Europe.

Geographical regions in which we have tended to specialise include the Pacific and its surrounding countries – South America, the Northwest Coast of America, Japan, China, the maritime regions of Asia, including the Philippines and Indonesia, and Australia. Books on Africa, the polar regions, manuscripts and separately published maps are also handled.
  1. [BUNBURY, Henry William.] ‘GAMBADO, Geoffrey’.

    An Academy for grown Horsemen, containing the completest Instructions for Walking,...

    London, W. Dickinson, S. Hooper, and Messrs Robinsons, 1787 [colophon: Mount Vernon (NY), William Edwin Rudge, 1929].

    Limited edition, reprinted from the first, numbered 142 of 400 copies. A humorous parody of the manuals on horsemanship so fashionable in the late eighteenth century, Bunbury’s text was published pseudonymously as Geoffrey Gambado but the plates credited to his own name, with reference to the...

    £85

  2. KEATE, George. 

    An Account of the Pelew Islands, situated in the western part of the Pacific Ocean: composed from the journals...

    Dublin, Luke White, 1788. 

    First Dublin edition of this popular work, first published in London earlier the same year, by the virtuoso George Keate, member of the Royal Society and Society of Antiquities (1729−1797). 

    £650

  3. [TRADE AND EXCISE].

    An Additional Act for the better improvement and advancing the receipts of the Excise and New-Impost. At the...

    London, Henry Hills and Iohn Field, Printers to His Highness, 1657.

    First edition. The most substantial part of the Act, entitled ‘A Book of Values of Merchandize imported, according to which, excize is to be paid by the first buyer’, includes a forty-page alphabetical list of imported commodities, each recorded with the respective payable duty.

    £250

  4. [IMAGINARY VOYAGE.]

    Admirable Travels of Messieurs Thomas Jenkins and David Lowellin through the unknown Tracts of Africa: with...

    London, ‘for the Benefit of Robert Barker, an unfortunate blind man’, 1785.

    Rare, a lively chapbook novella of adventures and tribulations in Africa, fusing elements of a Robinsonade with a brief utopia.

    £1500

  5. [ATO PHOTOGRAPHIC ASSOCIATION.]

    Album of 100 gelatin silver prints of Tianjin (Tientsin), the Hai (Peiho) estuary, and Beijing...

    [Circa 1930s.]

    An attractive example of the commercially available albums produced by the Ato Photographic Association in the 1920s–30s. The present album is devoted to the area formerly known as Zhili or Chihli, encompassing Beijing and Tianjin. Small groups of images are devoted to the Hai forts and to...

    £2500

  6. [ATO PHOTOGRAPHIC ASSOCIATION.]

    Album of 100 gelatin silver prints of Fuzhou (Foochow) and Yunnan.

    [1930s.]

    Includes panoramas of Fuzhou apparently taken at different dates (the captions state a population of variously 600,000 and 700,000), and scenes of Kunming, the capital of Yunan province. There is an interesting short series on railway engineering in Yunnan province, and images of zinc mining, and poppy...

    £2500

  7. [BEIJING.]

    Album of Beijing and environs.

    [1920s.]

    A meticulously presented and captioned series of views, by a tourist or resident in Beijing (then Peking) with a thorough approach to recording their experience of the city and environs.

    £1500

  8. [MONTANUS, Arnoldus.]

    Ambassades mémorables de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales des Provinces Unies, vers les empereurs du Japon....

    Amsterdam, Jacob van Meurs, 1680.

    First edition in French of an important and influential study of Japan by the Dutch theologian and historian Arnoldus Montanus, based on eyewitness accounts from two Dutch East India Company (VOC) missions to Japan in 1649 and 1661.

    £3500

  9. [HILLER, Johann Adam, editor].

    Anecdoten zur Lebensgeschichte berühmter französischer, deutscher, italienischer, holländischer...

    Leipzig, Lankisch, 1762.

    Scarce first edition of Hiller’s two-volume collection of literary, philosophical and historical anecdotes. The editor’s note at the end mentions the contemporary publication of a French work of similar inspiration, and states the editor’s intention to translate it and publish it as a sequel to...

    £175

  10. JACOMB, Charles Ernest.

    And a new earth. A romance.

    London, George Routledge & Sons, 1926.

    First edition. A post-apocalyptic fantasy novel relating the history of a utopian island that survived a ‘second flood’ in 1958, which destroyed the world’s civilization and reduced the human population to just 10,000. The island was re-discovered by the New World Fleet in 2832, 872 years after...

    £75

  11. [USTONSON, Onesimus.]

    The Anglers Assistant being an Epitomy of ye whole Art of Angling wherein is shewn at one View ye Harbours,...

    Ustonson [c. 1815?]

    A fine and very rare broadside angling guide, the text probably written by Onesimus Ustonson (b. 1736), fishing tackle manufacturer and inventor of the multiplying reel, who had supplied equipment to Joseph Banks for Cook’s second voyage in 1772.

    £1000

  12. [BUNBURY, Henry William.] ‘GAMBADO, Geoffrey’.

    Annals of Horsemanship, containing Accounts of accidental Experiments and experimental...

    London, W. Nicholson for W. Baynes, 1808.

    Third edition of Bunbury’s satirical work with humorous etchings. First published in 1791 and often presented as a continuation of Bunbury’s Academy for grown Horsemen (published in 1784 also under the name Gambado), the Annals of Horsemanship is a parody of Arthur Young’s...

    £475

  13. ‘G.’ [i.e. Terence Ian Fytton ARMSTRONG].

    Annotations on Some Minor Writings of “T.E. Lawrence” by G.

    London: W. Graves for Eric Partridge, Ltd. at the Scholartis Press, 1935.

    First edition, no. 484 of 500 copies. Annotations was the second bibliographical work on Lawrence to be published, and was written by the poet, author, bibliographer, and bookseller T.I.F. Armstrong (AKA ‘John Gawsworth’), who possessed ‘a bibliographic talent that led Lawrence Durrell to...

    £75

  14. GALLICO, Paul.

    An archive of thirty-four scrapbooks compiled by Gallico.

    1928–1972.

    A lovingly and meticulously compiled archive of the writing career of the novelist Paul Gallico. The scrapbooks are arranged chronologically and by book/film with letters, telegrams, publicity materials, photographs and ephemera neatly intermingled with copies of reviews and reactions from local,...

    £5500

  15. [PAPER TRADE.] 

    Arrest du conseil d’état du roi, portant modération et interprétation de plusieurs articles du tarif des...

    [Besançon?, 1772?] 

    A seemingly unrecorded issue of this decree governing tariffs on paper and cardboard in Louis XV’s France, with no imprint but with the colophon ‘fait à Besançon le 18 avril 1772, signé, Lacoré’. 

    £175

  16. GARDINER, John Smallman. 

    The Art and the Pleasures of Hare-Hunting.  In six Letters to a Person of Quality … 

    London: Printed by R. Griffith … 1750. 

    First edition, scarce, of this eloquent and amusing account of hare-hunting, the first monograph on the subject in English, comprising letters on the superiority of hare-hunting to fox-hunting (less dangerous, less laborious), on the best types of dogs, of trailing and starting hares, &c.  Gardiner’s...

    £1250

  17. [SPANISH FISHING.]

    Artes, aparejos e instrumentos de pesca de España.

    [Madrid, Artes Gráficas ‘Mateu’?, 1920?]

    First and only edition, very rare, a striking illustrated guide to the traditional Spanish fishing industry, with thirty-five large and unusual illustrations of typical fishing villages and dress; net designs, and floats; boats; drag-nets; tangle-nets, purse seins; hooks; and various ‘objetos curiosos’....

    £2000

  18. [DELAMARCHE, Alexandre, cartographer; Bernard COUDERT, lithographer.]

    ‘Atlas’.

    Paris, Legay, [c. 1889].

    An attractive set of large educational jigsaw maps showing the world, Europe, and France, preserved in its original allegorical box.

    £875

  19. NIEL, Adolphe.

    Autograph note signed.

    [No place], 19 March [1851 or 1852].

    A brief note in which the French army general and statesman Adolphe Niel (1802–1869) urges the continued support of an elderly war widow living in the south-west of France.

    £150

  20. HARLINGUE, L. [Albert].

    'Baktiaris Persans'.

    [Iran, c. 1905-1911].

    An impressive press image of the Bakhtiari tribe – revolutionaries in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911 – here posing in strength with their weapons. Their leader, Sardar As’ad Bakhtiari (1856-1917), was a key figure in the Iranian revolution; under his command (and with German...

    £1500