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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.
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  1. [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

  2. [ISELIN, ISAAK].

    Träume eines Menschenfreundes. Erster Theil.

    Basel, Johannes Schweighauser, 1776.

    First edition, part one only (very rarely to be found complete with both parts), of the most mature expression of Iselin’s anti-Rousseau republicanism, a social ‘dream’ of great articulation and -arguably- applicability, residing confidently on the borderline between utopia and reformism, and the...

    £150

  3. JACOBS, H. W.

    Betterment Briefs. A Collection of Published Papers on Organized Industrial Efficiency.

    New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1909.

    Second, definitive edition. ‘The nucleus of the present volume is a series of four articles published by Mr Jacobs in The Engineering Magazine from September, 1906, to January, 1907, under the title “Organization and Economy in the Railway Machine Shop”. This was followed in June by a paper on...

    £220

  4. JACOB, William.

    Report on the Trade in Foreign Corn, and on the Agriculture of the north of Europe … To which is added, an Appendix...

    London, James Ridgway, 1826.

    First edition; two further editions were published the same year. William Jacob (1762?–1851) was appointed to the comptrollership of corn returns in 1822. ‘He was commissioned by the Government in 1825 and 1827 to report on the condition of agriculture in some of the states of northern Europe; the...

    £220

  5. 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

  6. JEFFERYS, Thomas.

    The theatre of war in the Kingdom of Bohemia, drawn from the survey of J. C. Muller Captain Engineer to the Emperor:...

    [London], Thomas Jefferys, 6 June 1757.

    This map, issued at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War, illustrates the route taken by Frederick the Great’s Prussian forces against those of Saxony and Prussia, up to the opening of siege operations against Prague. On 18 June 1757, Count von Daun, in attempting to raise this siege, overpowered...

    £500

  7. JEPSON, Edgar.

    The Keepers of the People.

    London, C. Arthur Pearson Limited, 1898.

    First edition of an idiosyncratic fantasy novel which, in unabashed reactionary tones, expresses unease at modernity and particularly at the emancipation of women, to the point of spurning religious morality in order to endorse male-dominated polygamy.

    £175

  8. JESUS, Carlos Augusto Montalto de.

    Historic Macao …

    Hong Kong, Kelly & Walsh, 1902.

    First edition of an important history of Macao by the Macanese scholar Montalto de Jesus (1863–1927), a fellow of the Geographical Society of Lisbon and a member of the China branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.

    £950

  9. [JOCKEY CLUB.] HERVEY, John.

    Racing in America, 1922-1936, written for the Jockey Club.

    New York, Scribner Press for the Jockey Club, 1937.

    First edition of the first volume to be written by Hervey, bringing the history begun by W.S. Vosburgh up to the time of publication. ‘In the previous volume [Racing in America, 1866-1921] the theme was exclusively racing, and breeding was only incidentally interwoven throughout the narrative....

    £350

  10. [JOCKEY CLUB.] HERVEY, John.

    Racing in America, 1665-1865 … written for the Jockey Club.

    New York, Scribner Press for the Jockey Club, 1944.

    First edition, limited, numbered 323 of 800 copies. The first volume of the Jockey Club’s monumental history of racing in America, covering earliest period of American racing, from the foundation of the first track on Long Island until the end of the Civil War, some two centuries later.

    £720

  11. [JOCKEY CLUB.] KELLEY, Robert F.

    Racing in America, 1937-1959, written for the Jockey Club.

    New York, North River Press for the Jockey Club, 1960.

    First edition, limited, numbered 474 of 1000 copies. A continuation of the chronicles of American racing, the present volume is the first to adopt the form of annals. ‘This addition to The Jockey Club’s volumes of Racing in America is different in format than any of its predecessors....

    £180

  12. [JOHNSON, Samuel].

    Rasselas.

    London: J. Bretell for Hector McLean, 1819.

    Third Smirke edition, ordinary-paper issue. ‘All travel has its advantages,’ the lexicographer, essayist and critic Samuel Johnson (1709-84) wrote in his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. ‘If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune...

    £300

  13. 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

  14. 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

  15. KERKHERDERE, Jan Gerard.

    De situ Paradisi Terrestris ... Praecedit... conatus novus de Cepha reprehenso ex Galatarum secundo capite.

    Leuven, Martin van Overbeke, 1729.

    First edition. Kerkherdere addresses the question of the location of the Garden of Eden, the earthly Paradise, accompanying his conjecture with a map engraved by P.E. Boultats of Antwerp; the perusal of various sources, geographical studies and toponymic considerations lead the author, an Imperial...

    £550

  16. [KERNER, Johann Georg.]

    Reise über den Sund.

    Tübingen, in der J.G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1803.

    Rare first edition of this historical, political and economic analysis of Sweden, in epistolary form, complete with a folding table detailing land tax revenues by region.

    £250

  17. [KINGDOM OF THE TWO SICILIES.] 

    Ruoli de’ generali ed uffiziali attivi e sedentanei del reale esercito e dell’armata di mare...

    Napoli, Reale Tipografia Militare, 1855.

    Scarce 1855 edition of this roster of army and navy officers, doctors, chaplains, and administrators in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, issued during the reign of Ferdinand II and only a few years before the kingdom’s demise, handsomely bound with the royal arms on each board.

    £400

  18. LAET, Joannes de, editor.

    De imperio Magni Mogolis sive India vera commentarius e variis auctoribus congestus …

    Leiden, ‘ex officina Elzeviriana’, 1631.

    Pocket-sized Elzevir edition (one of two issued in the same year) of this work on India and the Mughal Empire compiled by the Dutch geographer Joannes de Laet (1581–1649), this copy, exceptionally, in its original drab boards.

    £950

  19. LANCINA, Juan Alfonso Rodríguez de.

    Historia de las reboluciones del Senado de Messina, que ofrece al sacro, Catolico, real nombre...

    Madrid, Por Julian de Paredes, impressor de libros, en la Plaçuela del Angel, 1692.

    First and only edition of this rare account of the anti-Spanish revolt of Messina, in Sicily, which broke out in 1674 and lasted until 1678, by Juan Alfonso Rodríguez de Lancina (c. 1649–1703). Lancina, a judge of the Grand Court of the Vicaria, the highest criminal court of the Kingdom of...

    £2500

  20. 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