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.
  1. MARZAGLIA, Gaetano.

    Fascetto di pratiche matematiche spiegate alle persone popolari per uso del comercio umano, e civile, in questa...

    Verona, Dionisio Ramanzini, 1780.

    A lovely copy of the second edition, considerably augmented from the first of 1754, of this book of applied mathematical problems by the Veronese mathematician Gaetano Marzaglia (or Marcegaglia, 1716–1787), heavily influenced by the work of Wolff, who provides the motto to the book, and whose works...

    £650

  2. McWILLIAM, James Ormiston.

    Medical History of the Expedition to the Niger during the Years 1841-2. Comprising an Account of the...

    London: C. Adlard for John Churchill, 1843.

    First edition. A classic treatise on the Niger region and the yellow fever written by the Scottish doctor James Ormiston McWilliam, the hero of a government expedition exploring the region and its commercial opportunities, and explicitly aimed at suppressing the slave trade. When the yellow fever...

    £600

  3. MEGUSCHER, Francesco.

    Memoria … in risposta al quesito additare la migliore e più facile maniera per rimittere i boschi nelle...

    Milan, presso l’I.R. Istituto, 1847.

    First edition of this comprehensive report on the best means to reverse the deforestation of the mountains of Lombardy, in a way that could be both environmentally sustainable and economically profitable.

    £950

  4. 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...

    £7500

  5. MERCURIALE, Girolamo. 

    De arte gymnastica libri sex, in quibus exercitationum omnium vetustarum genera, loca, modi, facultates,...

    Venice, [Lucantonio II] Giunta, 1587. 

    Third edition of ‘the first illustrated book on gymnastics’ (Morton).  A physician occupying senior posts in the medical faculties of Padua, Bologna, Rome, and Pisa, Girolamo Mercuriale (1530–1606) draws heavily on accounts of ancient exercise to argue for its medical benefits, being the...

    £2750

  6. [MILITARY MEDICINE.]

    Volume of nineteen items concerning the treatment and care of war wounded.

    Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Milan, Paris, 1855-1875.

    A remarkable sammelband of scarce works on military medicine in French, Italian, Dutch and German, including an item on Florence Nightingale and treatises on gunshot wounds, the Red Cross, field hospitals, battlefield first aid, and ambulances. Several items bear inscriptions by Félix Hippolyte...

    £2250

  7. M’LEOD, John.

    Voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Alceste, along the coast of Corea, to the Island of Lewchew; with an account of...

    London, John Murray, 1818.

    Second edition (first 1817), with five handsome aquatints, of this account of the voyage of the Alceste to China with Lord Amherst’s embassy, by the ship’s surgeon M’Leod.

    £275

  8. [MONASTICISM].

    Risposta ad alcuni aggravi fatti ai monaci nel libro, che ha il titolo di Politica, diritto, e religione.

    Milan, Francesco Agnelli, 1742.

    Only edition of this anonymous response to Giuseppe Gorini Corio’s controversial Politica, diritto, e religione, that had appeared in Milan at the start of the same year.

    £400

  9. MONETA, José Manuel, and Robert Keith HEADLAND, (ed.).

    Four Antarctic Years in the South Orkney Islands: an Annotated...

    London, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 2017.

    One man’s fascinating record of four winters in the Antarctic during the 1920s, the period of transition from the isolation of the Heroic Age to the beginnings of radio communication with the world outside.

    £50

  10. [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.

    £4500

  11. MONTLOSIER, Francois-Dominique de Reynaud, comte de

    Le peuple Anglais bouffi d’orgueil, de bière et de thé, jugé...

    Paris, chez Surosne, An IX (1803). 

    First edition, scarce on the market, of a virulent and amusing anti-English tirade by the French politician Montlosier (1755–1838), written on the eve of the Napoleonic Wars. 

    £375

  12. MORELLET, André, Abbé.

    Lettres inédites … sur l’histoire politique et littéraire des années 1806 et 1807 …

    Paris, Ladvocat [and London, Martin Bossange], 1822.

    First edition of a collection of fourteen letters from the Abbé Morellet (1727–1819) to an anonymous correspondent in Italy, published as a supplement to his Mémoires sur le XVIIIe siècle et sur la Révolution (1821).

    £200

  13. MORTON, John.

    The natural History of Northampton-Shire, with some Account of the Antiquities, to which is annex’d a Transcript...

    London, R. Knaplock and R. Wilkin, 1712.

    First edition of Morton’s systematic natural history of Northamptonshire. Compiled over the course of a decade, Morton’s Natural History provides a careful account of the natural history, minerals, fossils, and geography of the county, accompanied by fourteen large copper-engravings....

    £775

  14. MOSZKOWSKI, Alexander [and H.J. STENNING (trans.).] 

    The Isles of Wisdom. 

    London, George Routledge & sons, 1924.

    First English edition of Alexander Moszkowski’s dystopian satire.  Moszkowski imagines a visit to a series of South-East Asian islands which each subscribe unreservedly to a philosophical school of thought.  These utopias are absurd: people’s notions of philosophical purity prevent them...

    £230

  15. 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

  16. NAVARRETE, Domingo Fernández. 

    Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China.  Descripcion...

    Madrid, Juan Garcia Infançon for Florian Anisson, 1676. 

    Scarce first edition, one of the most important early studies of Chinese history, religion, philosophy, and culture, by the Spanish Dominican Domingo Navarrete (d. 1689). 

    £4750

  17. NIEHANS, Jürg.

    Der Gedanke der Autarkie im Merkantilismus von einst und im Neomerkantilismus von gestern.

    Zürich, H. Girsberger, 1945.

    First edition of Niehan’s work on the idea of self-sufficiency in the age of Mercantilism, published as volume 37 of the series Zürcher Volkswirtschaftlicje Forschungen, under the editorship of M. Saitzew. Niehans (1920-2007), a distinguished economist, taught at the Universities of Zurich, Johns...

    £40

  18. 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

  19. NIEUHOF, Jan; Athanasius KIRCHER; and John OGILBY, translator.

    An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United...

    London, John Macock for the author, 1669.

    First English edition, beautifully illustrated, recounting the Dutch traveller Jan Nieuhof’s journey as part of Peter de Goyer and Jacob de Keizer’s embassy to Peking between 1655 and 1657. Having previously been employed by the Dutch West India Company in Brazil, Nieuhof joined the Dutch...

    £4000

  20. 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