HERBERT, Mary Elizabeth Herbert, Baroness.
Cradle lands by Lady Herbert.
London, Richard Bentley, 1867.
8vo, pp. vi, [4], 330; with chromolithographed frontispiece and 7 plates, slip tipped-in before list of illustrations; occasional light foxing; very good in contemporary calf, spine in compartments with gilt fleurs-de-lys and green lettering-piece, covers with panel design and gilt fleurs-de-lys, red edges, marbled endpapers; a little wear to extremities and light marks to covers; ‘St Aubyn House School Brighton’ lettered in gilt to upper cover and prize bookplate to front pastedown (Charles E. Ince, 1876).
First edition of this account by the Roman Catholic convert and philanthropist Lady Herbert (1822-1911), recording her travels to Cairo and Upper Egypt, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, Gaza, Nazareth, Beirut, Damascus, and Ephesus. ‘The journey detailed in the following pages was undertaken for the sake of the health of one of the party to whom the Egyptian and Syrian climates had been recommended in exchange for the damp cold of an English winter and spring ... She hopes that this work may be of interest to those who have already trodden in the same steps, and induce others to follow them, before railroads and other contemplated innovations shall have succeeded in changing the character of that which is now rightly and emphatically called “Holy Land”’ (pp. v-vi).
