Beckford’s Copy
ZINZERLING, Justus.
Jodoci Sinceri Itinerarium Galliae, ita accommodatum, ut ejus ductu mediocri tempore tota Gallia obiri, Anglia & Belgium adiri possint: nec bis terve ad eadem loca rediri oporteat: notatis cujuscunque loci, quas vocant, deliciis: cum appendice, de Burdigalia, ac iconibus urbium praecipuarum illustratum. Amsterdam, Janson, 1649.
12mo, pp. [20], 340, [24], with an additional engraved title-page by J. D. Meurs and twenty folding plates (see below); paperflaw to foot of G2 (not affecting text), a few small spots and stains; a fine copy in early nineteenth-century diced russia by Charles Smith, with his blindstamp, spine gilt in six compartments with alternating crosses and cinquefoils, gilt edges, gilt turn-ins; from the library of William Beckford, with a pale pencil note in his hand on the front endpaper, front endpaper with the collation note of his bookseller William Clarke (‘ C P / WC’), bookplates of Cecil Thompson and S. A. Thompson Yates, leather booklabel of Austin Smith.
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Jodoci Sinceri Itinerarium Galliae, ita accommodatum, ut ejus ductu mediocri tempore tota Gallia obiri, Anglia & Belgium adiri possint: nec bis terve ad eadem loca rediri oporteat: notatis cujuscunque loci, quas vocant, deliciis: cum appendice, de Burdigalia, ac iconibus urbium praecipuarum illustratum.
William Beckford’s copy of a later edition of Zinzerling’s Itinerarium Galliae (1616), describing several years of travelling in France, England and the Low Countries, with an attractive series of city views which appear here for the first time. The number of plates seems to vary between copies, up to a maximum of twenty-two (those found here plus Montpellier and Leiden).
Provenance:
William Beckford (1760–1844), who had toured England in his youth, travelled through the Low Countries on his Grand Tour (later described in Dreams, waking Thoughts, and Incidents), and sojourned in Revolutionary Paris in 1791 (buying up the possessions of fleeing aristocrats).
One of the keenest and most fastidious bibliophiles who ever lived, Beckford was forced to sell Fonthill with two-thirds of his library in 1822, the books subsequently appearing at auction in 1823. By the time of his death in 1844, however, he had assembled a second library, which was inherited by his youngest daughter, the Duchess of Hamilton. This was sold by the twelfth Duke of Hamilton at Sotheby’s in 1882–3, in four sales with nearly ten thousand lots. This volume was lot 2015 in the 1882 Hamilton Palace sale (lot 2016 is another copy).
STCN 08940839X.