FROM FINLAND TO KAMCHATKA
ALEXANDER, William, attributed.
The Costume of the Russian Empire, illustrated by a Series of seventy-three Engravings. With Descriptions in English and French.
London, ‘printed for William Miller … by Howlett and Brimmer … 1803’, [c. 1823].
Folio, pp. [18 (with separate title-pages in English and French)], 73 plates (coloured stipple engravings), each with facing letterpress description, English to recto, French to verso, engravings dated ‘January 1 1803’ but nos 4, 7, 9, 10, 17, 21, 24, 27, 32, 40–43, 46, 48, 49, 56, 59, 60, 63, 71, and 72 with watermark ‘J Whatman 1823’, and no. 31 watermarked ‘J Whatman 1821’; some offsetting, occasional light foxing; overall very good in contemporary black crushed morocco, borders to covers roll-tooled in blind and gilt, spine in compartments lettered and decorated in gilt, edges gilt, red endpapers; some wear to joints, corners, and edges, a few abrasions to covers; armorial bookplate of ‘General Hughes’ to front pastedown.
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The Costume of the Russian Empire, illustrated by a Series of seventy-three Engravings. With Descriptions in English and French.
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.
The Costume of the Russian Empire was one of a series of costume books issued by Miller, the others being devoted to China, Turkey, Austria, and Great Britain. He writes as follows in his preface: ‘The Russian empire is of an extent unknown to other modern nations, and hardly equalled by that of the Romans in the summit of their power. It embraces within its limits, nations the most various, with countries and climates the most opposite … It touches the Frozen Ocean of the north: and borders upon the warm climates of Persia, Japan, and China, on the south. It occupies more than a seventh part of the known continent, and almost a twenty-sixth part of the whole globe’.
The authenticity of the present work is undoubted, being in fact copied from a series of engravings [by J.G. Georgi] begun at Petersburg in 1776, and finished in 1779, under the care and at the expense of C.W. Müller, at the desire of the late Empress.’ The first twenty plates depict ‘those nations who derive their origin from the Finns’; plates 21 to 42 illustrate ‘the different nations and hordes of Tartars’; plates 43 to 59 are devoted to ‘various nations of the Samoyeds, to those who occupy the most eastern part of Siberia, and the islands in the Eastern Ocean’; and the remainder ‘include the Kalmuk, the Mongoles, and some other smaller races’.
Abbey attributes the text to William Alexander, and suggests that later reprints such as this were ‘in fact published by Thomas M’Lean, who took over these “Costumes” in 1818, and reprinted the series’.
See Abbey, Travel 244 and 245.