Travel
Contact Jonathan Harrison, Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi or Katherine Thorn
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.-
GONZÁLES DE MENDOZA, Juan, and Robert PARKE, translator.
The Historie of the great and mightie Kingdome of China,...
London, Printed by J. Wolfe for Edward White, 1588 [or 1589].
First edition in English, rare, of the first significant European study of China, ‘one of the outstanding “best-sellers” of the sixteenth century’ (Boxer).
£50000
-
HAKLUYT, Richard.
The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land, to the most...
Imprinted at London by George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, Deputies to Christopher Barker … 1589.
First edition, a fine copy, with the world map, in a strictly contemporary London binding, of the first collection of English voyages.
£350000
-
ABBEVILLE, Claude d’.
Histoire de la mission des peres capucins en l’isle de Maragnan et terres circonvoisines ou est traicte...
Paris, François Huby, 1614.
Second edition, enlarged and revised from the first edition published earlier the same year, a handsome copy. The first written account of the Capuchin mission to Maranhão, an island on the coast of Brazil, of which, Sabin notes, this is the earliest mention. In 1612 the mission, composed of...
£30000
-
FOREST, BISSON FRERES, &c.
A collection of eight albumen prints (or salt and albumen collages) from mammoth-plate negatives...
France, 1864-5.
An exceptional series of oversize prints commissioned by the Compagnie de Chemins de Fer de l‘Ouest to commemorate the construction of a series of new bridges completed 1861–1864, including the metal bridge at Orival, later destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War, and the oblique stone bridge of...
£30000
-
[ROZIER.]
Le rozier historial de France contenant deux roziers. Le p[re]mier rozier contient plusieurs belles rozes et boutons...
Paris, [Gilles Couteau for François Regnault,] 26 February 1522 [i.e. 1523].
First edition, the very handsome Fairfax-Murray copy, of the Rozier historial de France.
£25000
-
HAKLUYT, Richard.
The principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over-land,...
London, George Bishop, Ralph Newberie, and Robert Barker, 1598 [– 1600].
Second edition, first issue of ‘Hakluyt’s monumental masterpiece, and the great prose epic of the Elizabethan period’ (Penrose), complete with the section on the conquest of Cadiz by Essex (vol. I, pp. 607-619) ordered suppressed by Elizabeth I in 1599 (in ESTC state 1a).
£20000
-
DU HALDE, Jean-Baptiste.
A Description of the Empire of China and Chinese-Tartary, together with the Kingdoms of Korea, and Tibet,...
London, T. Gardner for Edward Cave, 1738 [– 1741].
The first complete English translation of Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s Description géographique … de l’Empire de la Chine (1735), the ‘Bible of European sinophilia’ (Löwendahl). Based on the reports of major Jesuit missionaries, and shaped by the earlier Historia of Martini and Mémoires of Le...
£15000
-
SICARDO, José.
Christiandad del Japon, y dilatada persecucion que padecio. Memorias sacras, de los martyres de las ilustres religiones...
Madrid, Francisco Sanz, 1698.
Rare first edition of this important and comprehensive account of Christian missions to Japan by the Spanish Augustinian José Sicardo (1643–1715).
£12000
-
COPE, Walter, Sir.
‘Enchiridion. Certaine breife Remonstrances offered unto his Ma[jes]tie … Touching divers Inconveniences...
[London?], 1613.
A fine, unpublished manuscript treatise on the balance of trade, dedicated to James I, by the administrator, politician, and collector Sir Walter Cope (c. 1553–1614).
£11000
-
LATHAM, Simon.
Latham’s Falconry: or, the Faulcons Lure, and Cure: in two Books. The first, concerning the ordering and training...
London: Printed by Thomas Harper, for John Harison. 1633.
First collected edition (third edition of volume I, originally published in 1614 and reissued in 1615, second edition of volume II, originally published in 1618).
£8500
-
POCOCKE, Richard.
A Description of the East, and some other Countries. London: W. Bowyer for the Author, [‘and sold by J. and...
[Nourse, and J. Rivington’ (I)], 1743–1745.
First edition, demy folio issue. A successful churchman Pococke (1704-1765) is now best remembered as a traveller and mountaineer. His earliest journeys were undertaken between 1733 and 1736 through continental Europe. His ‘next and most ambitious journey, from 1737 to 1740, was to the Near...
£8000
-
KAEMPFER, Engelbert, and Johann Gaspar SCHEUCHZER, translator.
The History of Japan, giving an Account of the ancient...
London, for the translator, 1727.
First edition, first issue, of the German naturalist Engelbert Kaempfer’s monumental History of Japan, translated from an unpublished manuscript in Sir Hans Sloane’s library by his librarian, the Swiss naturalist Johann Caspar Scheuchzer, and illustrated with splendid plates from Kaempfer’s...
£7500
-
TARTAGLIA, Niccolò Fontana.
Quesiti, et inventioni diverse.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Venturino Ruffinelli ‘ad instantia et requisitione, & a proprie spese de Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano Autire’, July 1546.]
First edition, annotated throughout by a contemporary reader, of Tartaglia’s highly influential work on ballistics and algebra, containing his polemical rule for solving cubic equations.
£6750
-
MÜLLER, Gerhard Friedrich.
Voyages from Asia to America, for completing the discoveries of the north west coast of America. To...
London, T. Jefferys, 1764.
Second edition (first 1761) of this key work devoted to discoveries in northeastern Asia and northwestern America, including the Bering Strait, published by Thomas Jefferys, geographer to George III, ‘remembered in particular for some of the most important eighteenth-century maps of the Americas’...
£6500
-
GUIGNES, Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de.
Voyages à Peking, Manille et l’Île de France, faits dans l’intervalle des années 1784...
Paris, l’Imprimerie Impériale, 1808.
First edition, the complete four-volume set, containing a survey of Chinese history and customs, a narrative of the author’s journey to Beijing as part of the Dutch East India embassy in 1794–5, and a magnificent folio atlas featuring 97 beautiful illustrations and intricate maps.
£6500
-
MENDES PINTO, Fernão.
The Voyages and Adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto, a Portugal: during his travels for the space of one...
London, Printed by J. Macock, for Henry Cripps, and Lodowick Lloyd … 1653.
First edition in English, translated by Henry Cogan, of a travel best-seller, first published posthumously in 1614; there were nineteen editions in six languages by the end of the century, ‘rivalling the popularity of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. It is, in fact, an exotic and imaginative...
£6500
-
HELMAN, Isidore-Stanislas-Henri.
Faits mémorables des empereurs de la Chine, tirés des annales Chinoises, dédiés à Madame,...
Paris, chez l’auteur … et chez M. Ponce, [1788].
Two handsome engraved works by the French engraver and printseller Helman (1743–1806/9), here on uncut sheets, the first depicting scenes from Chinese history, the second episodes in the life of Confucius (Kong Fuzi).
£6000
-
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
-
PINDAR.
Ολγμπια Νεμεα Πγθια Ισθμια … Olympia, Nemea, Pythia, Isthmia. Una cum Latina omnium versione carmine...
Oxford, E Teatro Sheldoniano, 1698 … London, apud. Sam. Smith & Benj. Walford.
First edition thus, the variant with the title-page dated 1698 rather than 1697. The Greek text was edited by Richard West and Robert Welsted, and the chronology of the Olympiads provided by the Bishop of Lichfield.
£5250
-
NIEUHOF, Jan, and Georg HORN (translator).
Legatio Batavica ad magnum Tartariae chamum Sungteium, modernum Sinae...
Amsterdam, Jacob van Meurs, 1668.
First edition in Latin, beautifully illustrated, of Nieuhof’s account of his travels in China between 1655 and 1657, one of the most important early modern non-Jesuit studies.
£5000