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.-
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
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[HIGHLANDS.]
Fifth Report of the Commissioners for Roads and Bridges in the Highlands of Scotland.
[London, Hansard, 1811.]
A rare Parliamentary report on the construction of roads and bridges in Scotland, with a fine map by Aaron Arrowsmith showing the roads already constructed or under contract (in red) and the roads under consideration (in green).
£300
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HILL, Rowland.
Journal of a Tour through the North of England and Parts of Scotland. With Remarks on the present State of the established...
London: Printed by T. Gillet … and sold at Surr[e]y Chapel; also by T. Chapman [and seven others in London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow]. 1799
First edition, an account of a Scottish tour conducted in July –September 1798 by the eccentric evangelical preacher Rowland Hill, followed by lengthy remarks on the Scottish church in a letter to the Baptist minister James Haldane. There is another issue with the title Journal through the North...
£325
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HODSON, Thomas.
The Accomplished Tutor; or, complete System of liberal Education … Embellished with twenty Copper-plates and...
London, H. D. Symonds, and Vernor and Hood, 1802.
Second edition, revised, of a voluminous catch-all schoolbook (first published 1800), by Thomas Hodson, of the Middle Temple.
£300
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HOGG, James.
The Pilgrims of the Sun; a Poem …
London, John Murray, and Edinburgh, William Blackwood, 1815.
First edition, first issue, of a long poem by the Scottish shepherd and poet James Hogg, dedicated to Byron and detailing the journey of a local young woman, Mary Lee, to a heavenly world and back to earth, escorted by the spirit Cela.
£200
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HOWITT, William.
The rural and domestic life of Germany: with characteristic sketches of its cities and scenery, collected in a...
London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1842
A fine copy of the first edition of Howitt’s account of his travels in Germany and Austria, and one of the best books in English about German life at the time. Howitt had moved with his family to Heidelberg in 1840 and stayed in Germany for more than two years on account of the education of his older...
£100
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HUBER, Victor Aimé; James Robertson CRAUFURD, translator.
Stories of Spanish life, from the German of Huber. Edited by...
London, Henry Colburn, 1837.
First edition in English; rare. In his Hand-book, Richard Ford described it as ‘one of the best sketches of this original people and country’. The German original, Skizzen aus Spanien, had appeared in 1828.
£525
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‘HURLBUT’ [i.e. HURLBERT], William Henry.
Pictures of Cuba.
London: M’Corquodale and Co. for Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1855.
First British edition, revised and retitled, issued in the ‘Traveller’s Library’ series. Pictures of Cuba was first published under the title Gan-Eden: or, Pictures of Cuba (Boston: 1854), and Hurlbert (1827-1895) states in his preface that, ‘In the short time that has elapsed...
£150
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[‘HYSON, Timothy’, pseud. Thomas LOWNDES].
A Letter to Mr. Richard Twining, Tea Dealer, and One of the Candidates for...
London, [C. Roworth] for the author, 1827.
Second edition of the Letter to Mr Richard Twining, a public denunciation of the candidacy of the tea merchant Richard Twining (1749-1824) for a directorship of the East India Company in 1810. Twining, who had already been instrumental in the development of tea prices and taxation for many...
£250
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[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
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JACOMB, Charles Ernest.
And a New Earth. A Romance.
London, George Routledge & Sons, 1926.
First edition of this 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 ten thousand.
£75
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[JESUITS.]
The Travels of several learned Missioners of the Society of Jesus, into divers Parts of the Archipelago, India, China,...
London, for R. Gosling, 1714.
First English translation of twenty-two letters by major French Jesuit missionaries in Asia and the Americas, taken from Charles Le Gobien’s Lettres édifiantes et curieuses (1711–13). The Jesuits largely dominated seventeenth and early eighteenth-century missionary activity in the...
£1250
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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
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[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
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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
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KERKHERDERE, Jan Gerard.
De situ Paradisi Terrestris ... Praecedit ... conatus novus de Cepha reprehenso ex Galatarum secundo capite.
Leuven, Martin van Overbeke, 1729.
First edition of this work attempting to identify the geographic location of the Garden of Eden, the earthly Paradise, accompanying his conjecture with a map engraved by P.E. Boultats of Antwerp.
£550
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[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
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KOTZEBUE, August Friedrich Ferdinand von.
Travels from Berlin, through Switzerland, to Paris, in the Year 1804 … Translated from...
London, Richard Phillips, 1804.
First edition in English, quickly translated from Kotzebue’s Erinnerungen aus Paris (September 1804). As the German title suggests, the Travels is in fact largely devoted to Paris, with lively observations on Napoleon, Madame Recamier, the Musée des monuments français and Musée...
£500
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KOTZEBUE, Otto von.
A voyage of discovery into the South Sea and Beering’s Straits, for the purpose of exploring a north-east...
London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821.
First edition in English, translated from the German edition of the same year, of Kotzebue’s classic voyage; ‘a prized edition’ (Hill).
£3000
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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