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. BINGFIELD, William, pseud.

    The Travels and Adventures of William Bingfield, Esq; containing, as surprizing a Fluctuation...

    London: Printed for E. Withers ... and R. Baldwin ... 1753.

    First edition of one of the most entertaining imaginary voyages of the eighteenth century.

    £2100

  2. BIRKETT, Dorothy Nina Forbes (editor).

    Hunting Lays and Hunting Ways: An Anthology of the Chase … with fourteen Illustrations...

    London, John Lane at the Bodley Head, 1924.

    First edition of Lady Birkett’s collection of poetry and prose relating to fox-hunting, handsomely printed and generously illustrated.

    £75

  3. BLAINE, Delabere Pritchett.

    An Encyclopaedia of rural Sports, or, complete Account, historical, practical, and descriptive, of...

    London, Spottiswoodes and Shaw for Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1852.

    Second edition of Blaine’s comprehensive work on rural sports. First published in 1840, the Encyclopædia of rural Sports marks a considerable departure from Blaine’s earlier scientific texts on veterinary medicine, with sections on the history and philosophy of field sports, and on...

    £275

  4. [MARLBOROUGH, John Churchill, Duke of.]

    Tract volume of five rare works (three not in the British Library) relating...

    London, 1695–1706.

    Five works, 4to, bound together in nineteenth-century half calf with marbled sides; first and last pages of all works dusty; inscription of the sixth Duke of Marlborough dated 1847, bookplate with the Marlborough arms.

    £3850

  5. BONVALOT, Gabriel.

    Du Caucase aux Indes à travers le Pamir.

    Paris: Librairie Plon, 1889.

    First edition. The French orientalist and explorer Bonvalot (1853-1933) made his first expedition into Central Asia in 1880, and undertook a second journey into the area with the artist Pépin and the physician and scientist Guillaume Capus in 1886-1887. In the course of a remarkable expedition, the...

    £200

  6. BOSWELL, James.

    The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL. D. … Containing some poetical Pieces by Dr....

    London, Printed by Henry Baldwin, for Charles Dilly …, 1785.

    First edition. The text of the Journal was largely completed in 1773 from the diary Boswell kept while travelling in Scotland; publication was, however, delayed until after Johnson’s death. The advertisement for Boswell’s Life of Johnson on the errata leaf announces that the...

    £375

  7. BOYD, Hugh Macauley.

    The Indian observer. By the late Hugh Boyd, Esq. and others. Compiled by Mr. Bone.

    Calcutta, Joseph Cooper, 1795.

    Scarce first edition thus of this collection of letters by the Irish writer Hugh Boyd (1746-1794), compiled by Andrew Burchet Bone, and with a life of Boyd by Lawrence Dundas Campbell.

    £2750

  8. BRITISH MUSEUM.

    List of Missing English Theological and Devotional Books.

    [London, 1940s.]

    Mimeographed typescript of books missing after the losses suffered by the British Museum Library during the Second World War. This is one of several lists of books destroyed, produced both as a record and as a tool for acquiring replacement copies – this copy appears to have been used for that...

    £275

  9. BROOKE, Charles, Sir.

    Ten Years in Saráwak … With an introduction by H.H. the Rajah Sir James Brooke …

    London, Tinsley Brothers, 1866.

    First edition, uncommon in the original pictorial cloth, of this account of Sarawak in Borneo by Sir Charles Brooke (1829–1917), second of the ‘white rajas of Sarawak’, with an introduction by his famous uncle Sir James, the first raja.

    £1500

  10. [BROUN, Richard, Sir.] 

    Memorabilia curliana Mabenensia. 

    Dumfries, John Sinclair, 1830. 

    Uncommon first edition of this charming work on the sport of curling by the eccentric Scottish baronet Sir Richard Broun (1801–1858), with a focus on his native Lochmaben, being one of the earliest books on the sport. 

    £450

  11. [BRUNEL, Antoine de.]

    A journey into Spain.

    London, printed for Henry Herringman, 1670.

    First edition in English. A free and abridged translation of Voyage d’Espagne curieux, historique et politique, first published anonymously in 1665. Setting out from the Netherlands in 1651 in the company of François van Aerssen, Brunel toured France, Germany and Italy before travelling to...

    £950

  12. BRYDONE, P[atrick]. 

    A Tour through Sicily and Malta.  In a series of letters to William Beckford, Esq., of Somerly in Suffolk...

    London, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1775. 

    Fourth edition of ‘one of the most successful works on Italian travel written in the eighteenth century and … the first important book on Sicily’ (Pine-Coffin). 

    £250

  13. [BUNBURY, Henry William.] ‘GAMBADO, Geoffrey’.

    Annals of Horsemanship, containing Accounts of accidental Experiments and experimental...

    London, W. Nicholson for W. Baynes, 1808.

    Third edition of Bunbury’s satirical work with humorous etchings. First published in 1791 and often presented as a continuation of Bunbury’s Academy for grown Horsemen (published in 1784 also under the name Gambado), the Annals of Horsemanship is a parody of Arthur Young’s...

    £475

  14. [BUNBURY, Henry William.] ‘GAMBADO, Geoffrey’.

    An Academy for grown Horsemen, containing the completest Instructions for Walking,...

    London, W. Dickinson, S. Hooper, and Messrs Robinsons, 1787 [colophon: Mount Vernon (NY), William Edwin Rudge, 1929].

    Limited edition, reprinted from the first, numbered 142 of 400 copies. A humorous parody of the manuals on horsemanship so fashionable in the late eighteenth century, Bunbury’s text was published pseudonymously as Geoffrey Gambado but the plates credited to his own name, with reference to the...

    £85

  15. BUONACCORSI, Biagio, and Niccolò VALORI. 

    Diario de’ successi piu importanti seguiti in Italia, & particolarmente in...

    Florence, Filippo & Jacopo Giunta, 1568. 

    First edition of an insider account of Medici politics by Biagio Buonaccorsi (1472–1522), colleague and confidant of Machiavelli, bound with the first edition of Malespini’s history of Florence and owned by Claude-Enoch Virey, secretary to Henri II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé. 

    £1000

  16. 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

  17. [CAESAR.]  RAMUS, Petrus (Pierre de la RAMÉE). 

    Liber de militia C. Julii Caesaris, cum praefatione Joannis Thomae Freigii. 

    Frankfurt, heirs of Andreas Wechel, 1584. 

    An attractively bound copy of Ramus’s uncommon treatise on Caesar’s military tactics, with unusual edge decoration.  The humanist Petrus Ramus (1515–1572) published widely on classical history and grammar while teaching at the Collège de France.  He was briefly forced from his post after...

    £450

  18. CARDONNEL, Adam de.

    Picturesque Antiquities of Scotland [I–II] …

    London: Printed for the Author, and sold by Edwards … also by Edwards’s, in Halifax. 1788.

    First edition, the very rare issue with the plates in sepia, printed directly onto thick wove paper.

    £975

  19. CAREY, Henry Charles.

    Principles of social science … In three volumes …

    Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1858-1859.

    First edition, a very attractive copy, of Carey’s principal work. ‘His treatment of social science was original, and led him to a series of supposed discoveries, the order of which he has stated in the introduction of his most important work The Principles of Social Science. His point of departure...

    £500

  20. CATANEO, Girolamo. 

    De arte bellica, sive de designandis ac construendis arcibus et propugnaculis, necnon et de iis oppugnandis,...

    Lyons, Jean de Tournes, 1600.

    First Latin edition, scarce on the market, of this handsomely illustrated military classic, first published in Italian at Brescia in 1564.  Edited and published by Jean de Tournes, this edition is dedicated to Henry IV of France.  The military architect Cataneo (active 1540–1584) was considered,...

    £1850