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.-
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, of 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...
£30000
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[ABC.]
Petite géographie amusante abécédaire nouveau offrant pour chaque lettre de l’alphabet une carte coloriée avec l’explication...
C. Lehuby, ‘Librairie de l’enfance et de la jeunesse’, [1851].
A charming and very rare ABC intended to teach children European geography, from A for Allemagne to Z for Zara in Dalmatia, published just a few years after the upheavals of the revolutions of 1848.
£3750
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ALEXANDER, William, attributed.
The Costume of the Russian Empire, illustrated by a Series of seventy-three Engravings....
London, ‘printed for William Miller … by Howlett and Brimmer … 1803’, [c. 1823].
A later reprint of a handsome costume book devoted to the Russian empire, first printed by Samuel Gosnell for William Miller in 1803, illustrated with seventy-three coloured stipple engravings.
£950
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[ATLAS.]
School Atlas; or, Key to Goldsmith’s geographical Copy-Books …
London, Richard Phillips, [1810–11].
First edition(?), very rare. The maps include world maps in globe and on Mercator’s projection (in which Australia features as New Holland), Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America, England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, West Indies, ‘Hindoostan’, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire,...
£475
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[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
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[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
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BARRINGTON, George.
A Voyage to Botany Bay with a Description of the Country, Manners, Customs, Religion, &c. of the Natives by...
London, C. Lowndes for H.D. Symonds, [c. 1800-1802, A1 watermarked ‘1800’].
First and only combined edition, second issue. George Barrington was a ‘genteel young Irishman known for his sartorial elegance, his command of the etiquette of romantic sensibility, and for his prowess at picking pockets’ (Garvey p. 2). The fascinating contrast between Barrington’s charming...
£875
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[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
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[BEIJING.]
[Cover title:] ‘The most interesting views of Peiping’.
[c. 1900–1920.]
A very good example of a commercial souvenir album of Beijing and the Great Wall of China.
£1750
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[BEIJING.]
[Cover title:] ‘The most interesting views of Peiping’.
[C. 1900–1910.]
A very unusual commercial album of Beijing, with thirty-eight hand-coloured scenes of the city, probably taken using a swing-lens panoramic camera.
£2000
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BOSWELL, James.
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL. D. … Containing some poetical Pieces by Dr....
London, Printed by Henry Baldwin, for Charles Dilly …, 1785.
First edition. The text of the Journal was largely completed in 1773 from the diary Boswell kept while travelling in Scotland; publication was, however, delayed until after Johnson’s death. The advertisement for Boswell’s Life of Johnson on the errata leaf announces that the...
£375
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BOYD, Hugh Macauley.
The Indian observer. By the late Hugh Boyd, Esq. and others. Compiled by Mr. Bone.
Calcutta, Joseph Cooper, 1795.
Scarce first edition thus of this collection of letters by the Irish writer Hugh Boyd (1746-1794), compiled by Andrew Burchet Bone, and with a life of Boyd by Lawrence Dundas Campbell.
£2750
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BREREWOOD, Edward.
Enquiries touching the Diversity of Languages, and Religions through the cheife Parts of the World …
London, Printed [by Eliot’s Court Press] for John Bill, 1614.
First edition. Brerewood, professor of astronomy at Gresham College, was a scholar in many fields who published nothing in his own lifetime (he died in 1613). Enquiries, seen through the press by a nephew, explores the spread of ancient, eastern, and modern languages, discusses the...
£3000
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BROOKE, Arthur de Capell, Sir.
Travels through Sweden, Norway, and Finmark, to the North Cape ... Second edition.
London, printed for J. Rodwell, 1831.
Second edition (first 1823) of this account of the Scandinavian travels undertaken by Brooke (1791–1858) in 1820, illustrated with attractive lithographs, several after drawings by the author.
£400
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[BRUNEL, Antoine de.]
A journey into Spain.
London, printed for Henry Herringman, 1670.
First edition in English. A free and abridged translation of Voyage d’Espagne curieux, historique et politique, first published anonymously in 1665. Setting out from the Netherlands in 1651 in the company of François van Aerssen, Brunel toured France, Germany and Italy before travelling to...
£950
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BRYDONE, P[atrick].
A Tour through Sicily and Malta. In a series of letters to William Beckford, Esq., of Somerly in Suffolk...
London, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1775.
Fourth edition of ‘one of the most successful works on Italian travel written in the eighteenth century and … the first important book on Sicily’ (Pine-Coffin).
£250
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BURCKHARDT, Johann Ludwig (John Lewis).
Travels in Arabia, comprehending an account of those territories in Hedjaz which the Mohammedans...
London, Henry Colburn, 1829.
First edition, in one volume, recounting Johann Ludwig Burckhardt’s journey to Mecca on behalf of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior of Africa in 1814.
£3750
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BURTON, Richard Francis, and James MACQUEEN.
The Nile Basin. Part I. Showing Tanganyika to be Ptolemy’s western lake reservoir....
By James M’Queen … London, Tinsley Brothers, 1864.
First edition, complete with the three maps. This work, ‘which absolutely exudes venom, was the heart of Burton’s frontal attack on [John Hanning] Speke’s geographical theories. Burton dedicated it, with a marked degree of sarcasm, to “those kind friends, especially to those members of...
£2500
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CARDONNEL, Adam de.
Picturesque Antiquities of Scotland [I–II] …
London: Printed for the Author, and sold by Edwards … also by Edwards’s, in Halifax. 1788.
First edition, the very rare issue with the plates in sepia, printed directly onto thick wove paper.
£975
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CÉSPEDES Y MENESES, Gonzalo de.
Varia fortuna del soldado Pindaro.
Lisbon, Geraldo de la Viña, ‘626’ [i.e 1626].
Rare first edition of this semi-autobiographical picaresque novel, printed while the author was in exile in Lisbon following the publication of his politically controversial Historia apologética en los sucesos del reyno de Aragon (1622).
£6750