A Highlander, Russians, and Native Americans
[COSTUME.]
Dresses of different Nations or the Companion of History. [N.p., 1810s?]
8vo, ff. [38], comprising an engraved title-page and thirty-seven engraved plates of national costumes; one plate (‘A Chinese Lady of Quality’) creased where folded and evidently sent: (wax seal marks at head and foot, pencil inscription to verso: ‘My dear Willa, that is a pictur’); else a very good copy in contemporary drab brown wrappers, green patterned cloth spine; ticket of Campbell, ‘stationer & bookbinder’, Edinburgh, gift inscription to front endpaper 'Miss L. J. Wilson from Papa Pa'.
Very rare costume book, possibly a Scottish production, with double the number of plates of the only other known copy, commencing with a depiction of a ‘Scots Highlander’, and designed to educate children in the idiosyncrasies of national dress across the globe.
As well as the Highlander, there are Russian boors and gentlewomen, a Turkish bashaw, ladies of Peru, Tartary, Barbary, Siberia, and Hindustan, a sultaness, a Chinese mandarin, the Great Mogul, a ‘Kamtchadal’ from Kamchatka, ‘a woman of the interior of N. America’ (with bead necklaces), an ‘Esquimaux Indian’ using an ice drill, a ‘Hottentot woman in full dress’, a ‘Man of Nootka sound’, a man and woman of Tahiti, and a ‘Conaqua girl’.
The fact that the initial image is a Highlander and the work was either retailed or bound in Edinburgh suggests that this book might be of Scottish origin.
Not in Library Hub; OCLC records single a copy, with eighteen plates only, in the Cotsen Collection at Princeton (dated c. 1805).