A WELSH WOMAN'S WANDERINGS IN INDIA
PARKES, Fanny.
Wanderings of a pilgrim, in search of the picturesque, during four-and-twenty years in the east; with revelations of life in the Zenana … Illustrated with sketches from nature …
London, Pelham Richardson, 1850.
Two vols, folio, pp. xxxv, [1 (blank)], 479, [1], with 28 plates (10 coloured) and folding panorama of the Himalayas in pocket at end; xiii, [3], 523, [1 (blank)], with 21 plates (9 coloured); author’s name in Arabic characters to title; small tears and losses to frontispiece and to plate facing p. 369 in vol. 2 (repaired to blank rectos), foxing to some plates, a few light marks; overall very good in original blue pictorial cloth, spines lettered and blocked in gilt, gilt frame and central vignette to upper covers, repeated in blind on lower covers; some wear to spine ends, joints, corners, and edges (partly repaired), endpapers renewed.
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Wanderings of a pilgrim, in search of the picturesque, during four-and-twenty years in the east; with revelations of life in the Zenana … Illustrated with sketches from nature …
First edition, with many handsome tinted and coloured illustrations, of the lively journals of Fanny Parkes (1794–1875) documenting her time in India from 1822 to 1845, with an interval in England and Cape Town.
‘Everything about Fanny Parkes seems to have been abundant, not least her ingenuous enthusiasm for all things Indian. She and her customs-officer husband sailed for Bengal in 1822 … Immediately upon arrival at Calcutta she began learning Hindustani, gathering a household of fifty-seven servants … and exploring on her beloved Arab horse … In 1826 the Parkeses were posted to Prayag, near Allahabad … and from there Fanny staged a series of expeditions, often solo, through Thug country to Lucknow, to Benares … and to Agra, Meerut, and Delhi. Much to the amusement of the other British wives, Fanny became an avid and knowledgeable student of Hindu life and history, and her book is heavy with old Indian proverbs and mythology … the thought of going home in 1844 was appalling: “How I love this life in the wilderness!”, she cries at the end of the book’ (Wayward Women, p. 219).
Abbey, Travel 476; Mendelssohn II, p. 141.
