Travel

Contact Jonathan Harrison, Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi or Katherine Thorn

We stock Western books in European languages, generally – but not exclusively – published before circa 1850. We are especially interested in early travel accounts – from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries – in all areas beyond Europe.

Geographical regions in which we have tended to specialise include the Pacific and its surrounding countries – South America, the Northwest Coast of America, Japan, China, the maritime regions of Asia, including the Philippines and Indonesia, and Australia. Books on Africa, the polar regions, manuscripts and separately published maps are also handled.
  1. GONZALES DE MENDOZA, Juan. 

    The Historie of the Great and Mighty Kingdome of China, and the Situation thereof: together with the...

    London, Printed by J. Wolfe for Edward White, 1588[/9]. 

    First edition in English, rare, of the first significant European study of China, ‘one of the outstanding “best-sellers” of the sixteenth century’ (Boxer).  A publication of enormous influence on Elizabethan conceptions of China, it also contained much information on the Spanish Americas. ...

    £50000

  2. HAKLUYT, Richard.

    The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land, to the most...

    Imprinted at London by George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, Deputies to Christopher Barker … 1589.

    First edition, a fine copy, with the world map, in a strictly contemporary London binding, of the first collection of English voyages.

    £350000

  3. ABBEVILLE, Claude d’.

    Histoire de la mission des peres capucins en l’isle de Maragnan et terres circonvoisines ou est traicte...

    Paris, François Huby, 1614.

    Second edition, enlarged and revised from the first edition published earlier the same year, a handsome copy. The first written account of the Capuchin mission to Maranhão, an island on the coast of Brazil, of which, Sabin notes, this is the earliest mention. In 1612 the mission, composed of...

    £30000

  4. FOREST, BISSON FRERES, &c

    A collection of eight albumen prints (or salt and albumen collages) from mammoth-plate negatives...

    France, 1864-5.

    An exceptional series of oversize prints commissioned by the Compagnie de Chemins de Fer de l‘Ouest to commemorate the construction of a series of new bridges completed 1861–1864, including the metal bridge at Orival, later destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War, and the oblique stone bridge of...

    £30000

  5. [ROZIER.] 

    Le rozier historial de France contenant deux roziers.  Le p[re]mier rozier contient plusieurs belles rozes et boutons...

    Paris, [Gilles Couteau for François Regnault], 26 February 1522 [i.e. 1523]. 


    First edition, the very handsome Fairfax-Murray copy, of the Rozier historial de France

    £25000

  6. DU HALDE, Jean-Baptiste.

    A Description of the Empire of China and Chinese-Tartary, together with the Kingdoms of Korea, and Tibet,...

    London, T. Gardner for Edward Cave, 1738 [– 1741].

    The first complete English translation of Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s Description géographique … de l’Empire de la Chine (1735), the ‘Bible of European sinophilia’ (Löwenstein).

    £15000

  7. SICARDO, José.

    Christiandad del Japon, y dilatada persecucion que padecio. Memorias sacras, de los martyres de las ilustres religiones...

    Madrid, Francisco Sanz, 1698.

    Rare first edition of this important and comprehensive account of Christian missions to Japan by the Spanish Augustinian José Sicardo (1643–1715).

    £15000

  8. COPE, Walter, Sir.

    ‘Enchiridion. Certaine breife Remonstrances offered unto his Ma[jes]tie … Touching divers Inconveniences...

    [London?], 1613.

    A fine, unpublished manuscript treatise on the balance of trade, dedicated to James I, by the administrator, politician, and collector Sir Walter Cope (c. 1553–1614).

    £11000

  9. LATHAM, Simon.

    Latham’s Falconry: or, the Faulcons Lure, and Cure: in two Books. The first, concerning the ordering and training...

    London: Printed by Thomas Harper, for John Harison. 1633.

    First collected edition (third edition of volume I, originally published in 1614 and reissued in 1615, second edition of volume II, originally published in 1618).

    £8500

  10. POCOCKE, Richard.

    A Description of the East, and some other Countries.

    London: W. Bowyer for the Author, [‘and sold by J. and P. Knapton, W. Innys, W. Meadows, G. Hawkins, S. Birt, T. Longman, C. Hitch, R. Dodsley,...

    First edition, demy folio issue. The traveller and cleric Pococke (1704-1765), was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and graduated BA in 1725, BCL in 1731, and DCL in 1733. His family’s ecclesiastical connexions and his facility at navigating the complexities of clerical patronage enabled...

    £8000

  11. MENDES PINTO, Fernão. 

    The Voyages and Adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto, a Portugal: during his travels for the space of one...

    London, Printed by J. Macock, for Henry Cripps, and Lodowick Lloyd … 1653. 

    First edition in English, translated by Henry Cogan, of a travel best-seller, first published posthumously in 1614; there were nineteen editions in six languages by the end of the century, ‘rivalling the popularity of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.  It is, in fact, an exotic and imaginative...

    £7500

  12. KAEMPFER, Engelbert, and John Gaspar SCHEUCHZER (translator).

    The History of Japan, giving an Account of the ancient and...

    London, for the translator, 1727.

    First edition, first issue, of the German naturalist Engelbert Kaempfer’s monumental History of Japan, translated by the Swiss naturalist Johann Caspar Scheuchzer and illustrated with splendid plates.

    £7500

  13. CÉSPEDES Y MENESES, Gonzalo de.

    Varia fortuna del soldado Pindaro.

    Lisbon, Geraldo de la Viña, ‘626’ [i.e 1626].

    Rare first edition of this semi-autobiographical picaresque novel, printed while the author was in exile in Lisbon following the publication of his politically controversial Historia apologética en los sucesos del reyno de Aragon (1622).

    £6750

  14. TARTAGLIA, Niccolò Fontana. 

    Quesiti, et inventioni diverse. 

    Venice, Venturino Ruffinelli ‘ad instantia et requisitione, & a proprie spese de Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano Autire’, July 1546. 

    First edition, annotated throughout by a contemporary reader, of Tartaglia’s highly influential work on ballistics and algebra, containing his polemical rule for solving cubic equations. 

    £6750

  15. GUIGNES, Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de.

    Voyages à Peking, Manille et l’Île de France, faits dans l’intervalle des années 1784...

    Paris, l’Imprimerie Impériale, 1808.

    First edition, the complete four-volume set, containing a survey of Chinese history and customs, a narrative of the author’s journey to Beijing as part of the Dutch East India embassy in 1794–5, and a magnificent folio atlas featuring 97 beautiful illustrations and intricate maps.

    £6500

  16. RICCI, Matteo, and Nicolas TRIGAULT. 

    De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu.  Ex P. Matthaei...

    Augsburg, Christoph Mang, 1615. 

    First edition recounting Ricci’s seminal mission to China, edited by Nicolas Trigault, and regarded as ‘the most influential description of China to appear during the first half of the seventeenth century’. 

    £6500

  17. MÜLLER, Gerhard Friedrich.

    Voyages from Asia to America, for completing the discoveries of the north west coast of America. To...

    London, T. Jefferys, 1764.

    Second edition (first 1761) of this key work devoted to discoveries in northeastern Asia and northwestern America, including the Bering Strait, published by Thomas Jefferys, geographer to George III, ‘remembered in particular for some of the most important eighteenth-century maps of the Americas’...

    £6500

  18. HELMAN, Isidore-Stanislas-Henri.

    Faits mémorables des empereurs de la Chine, tirés des annales Chinoises, dédiés à Madame,...

    Paris, chez l’auteur … et chez M. Ponce, [1788].

    Two handsome engraved works by the French engraver and printseller Helman (1743–1806/9), here on uncut sheets, the first depicting scenes from Chinese history, the second episodes in the life of Confucius (Kong Fuzi).

    £6000

  19. BURBURY, John.

    A Relation of a Journey of the Right Honourable my Lord Henry Howard, from London to Vienna, and thence to Constantinople;...

    London, Printed for T. Collins and I. Ford … and S. Hickman … 1671.

    First and only edition of this account of a special embassy to the court of Sultan Mehmed IV, undertaken in 1664-5 by Walter Leslie, the Scottish-born Ambassador Extraordinary of the Holy Roman Empire. In his party was Henry Howard, later sixth Duke of Norfolk, along with the author John Burbury,...

    £5750

  20. DENNYS, Nicholas Belfield (editor).

    The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. A complete guide to the open ports of those countries,...

    Shortrede and Co., 1867.

    First edition, complete with all twenty-nine maps and plans, of this remarkable guide to the open ports of China and Japan in the late 1860s, aimed at ‘travellers, merchants, and residents’, compiled by Nicholas Dennys (1839–1900), a noted scholar of Chinese folklore, with the sinologist...

    £5750