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. [DARIEN EXPEDITION].

    A perfect list of the several persons residenters in Scotland, who have subscribed as adventurers in the joynt-stock...

    Glasgow, reprinted by Hutchinson & Brookman, 1827.

    First edition of this reprint of the list, first published in Edinburgh in 1696, of subscribers to William Paterson’s Company of Scotland. Paterson (1658-1719) sat on the first board of the Bank of England, but left following a disagreement with the other board members. Following this he devoted...

    £50

  2. DAVID, [Pierre Drapeyron de].

    A History of the Campaigns of General Pichegru, containing the Operations of the Armies of the North,...

    London, for G.G.J. & J. Robinson, 1796.

    First edition in English, printed in the same year as the French original, of this account of General Pichegru’s campaigns during the early French Revolutionary Wars.

    £185

  3. [DELAMARCHE, Alexandre, cartographer; Bernard COUDERT, lithographer.]

    ‘Atlas’.

    Paris, Legay, [c. 1889].

    An attractive set of large educational jigsaw maps showing the world, Europe, and France, preserved in its original allegorical box.

    £875

  4. 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 William...

    £4750

  5. DEVILLE, Albéric.

    Voyage aux grottes d’Arcy, suivi de poésies fugitives et de pensées détachées. Par A. Deville, professeur...

    Paris, Munier for Gérard, an XI (1802-3).

    Scarce first edition, presented by the author, of this curious work comprising a description of the famous caves at Arcy-sur-Cure in France, alongside various poetical fancies, by the natural history professor and versifier Albéric Deville (1774–1832).

    £250

  6. DIKREITER, Otto, and Renée SINTENIS (illustrator).

    Du und Dein Pferd: Ein anmutiges, belehrendes, und ergötzliches...

    Berlin, Königsberg, & Leipzig, Kanter Verlag, [c. 1938].

    First edition (seventh to tenth thousand) of a charmingly illustrated work. The collection of short pieces of poetry and prose relating to horses, gathered from sources ranging from Shakespeare and Goethe to Xenophon and the Koran, is illustrated by the German artist Renée Sintenis (1888–1965),...

    £80

  7. DITTRICH, Max, and Max HENZE, artist.

    Der Deutsch-Französische Krieg 1870 und 1871. Gedenk-Blätter in Wort und Bild an die Ehrentage...

    Dresden and New York: ‘Druck & Verlag von H.G. Münchmeyer’, 1895.

    Fortieth edition and 25th anniversary ‘Jubel-Ausgabe’. This lavishly-illustrated account of the Franco-Prussian War was published to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of this conflict that was, in retrospect, a harbinger of the political and military turmoil of the following century: ‘the...

    £750

  8. 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’ (Löwendahl). Based on the reports of major Jesuit missionaries, and shaped by the earlier Historia of Martini and Mémoires of Le...

    £15000

  9. DUPUIS, Joseph. 

    Journal of a Residence in Ashantee ... Comprising notes and researches relative to the Gold Coast, and the interior...

    London, for Henry Colburn, 1824. 

    First edition of this illustrated account of the Gold Coast by Joseph Dupuis (1789–1874), British consul at Mogador, from the library of Edward George Geoffrey Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby (1799–1869), later three times Prime Minister. 

    £1250

  10. ENDERS, Elizabeth Crump.

    Swinging Lanterns.

    New York and London, D. Appleton and Co., 1923.

    First edition of this celebrated Chinese travel memoir by Elizabeth Crump Enders, a vivid depiction of China in the 1920s formerly in the possession of Josephine del Drago, American heiress and Chinese art collector.

    £100

  11. [FASCISM.]

    Ordinamento Corporativo dello Stato Fascista.

    Padua, Edizione di propaganda corporative, 1935.

    Italian Fascism primarily followed the economic model of corporatism to organise capital and labour interest groups into trade unions and employer associations such as agriculture, industry, commercial trade, professionals and artists, as well as banks and credit associations. These trade associations...

    £2500

  12. FENNING, Daniel.

    The Ready Reckoner; or Trader’s most useful Assistant, in buying and selling all sorts of Commodities either...

    London: Printed for S. Crowder … and B. C. Collins … in Salisbury. 1785.

    First edition thus, edited by the mathematician and almanac-maker Joseph Moon of Salisbury.

    £250

  13. FINÉ, Oronce. 

    Opere di Orontio Fineo … divise in cinque parti, arimetica, geometria, cosmografia, e orivoli, tradotte da...

    Venice, Francesco Franceschi, 1587. 

    First Italian edition of the works of Finé.  Among the most influential scientific scholars of the sixteenth century, over three decades at the Collège Royale Oronce Finé (1494–1555) made considerable contributions to various branches of mathematics, from geometry and arithmetic to astronomy...

    £2750

  14. FLEMING, Peter.

    Brazilian Adventure.

    London: Queen Anne Press, 2010.

    First edition thus, no. 120 of 150 copies. 'In April 1932 Fleming answered an advertisement in the agony column of The Times, which led him to take part in a crack-brained and amateurish expedition to the hinterland of Brazil, ostensibly to look for Colonel P.H. Fawcett, a missing explorer....

    £125

  15. FLEMING, Peter.

    News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir.

    London: Queen Anne Press, 2010.

    First edition thus, no. 120 of 150 copies. Fleming had first travelled to China in 1931 and returned in 1933 as the Special Correspondent of The Times, to cover the war between the nationalists and the communists; 'After reaching Mukden (Shenyang) in Manchuria and taking part in a sortie...

    £125

  16. FLINDERS, Matthew.

    Narrative of his Voyage in the Schooner Francis: 1798. Preceded and followed by Notes … by Geoffrey Rawson...

    [London,] The Golden Cockerel Press, 1946.

    No. 327 of 750 copies, of which the first 100 were specially bound in full green morocco.

    £650

  17. FLORENT DE SALES (pseud.).

    Vrai systême du monde physique et moral.

    [Switzerland,] 1797.

    Only edition, rare, of this utopia, the identity of whose author, and even of whose printer, remains unknown.

    £2500

  18. FORBES, James David.

    Travels through the Alps ... New edition revised and annotated by W.A.B. Coolidge ... With portrait, new maps,...

    London, Adam and Charles Black, 1900.

    A handsome edition of four of Forbes’s chief writings relating to his Alpine travels, from the library of Guido Rey (1861–1935), the distinguished Italian Alpinist, writer and photographer.

    £450

  19. FORD, Richard (and Ian ROBERTSON, editor).

    A hand-book for travellers in Spain, and readers at home. Describing the...

    [Arundel and London,] Centaur Press, [1966].

    Richard Ford’s classic Hand-book for travellers in Spain, with an introduction by Ian Robertson and a revised index.

    £120

  20. 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