Travel

Contact Jonathan Harrison, Alex Day or Andrea Mazzocchi

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. [MALTA.] 

    Eruditissima istoria dell’assedio fatto dalli Turchi all città di Malta. 

    Naples, [c. 1800?]. 

    Scarce poem on the 1565 Great Siege of Malta, when around 2400 Knights Hospitallers and Maltese inhabitants repelled an Ottoman invasion lead by Dragut and Mustafa Pasha.  Library catalogues credit the work to Innico Grivaccio. 

    £650

  2. [MANNING, Frederic.]

    The Middle Parts of Fortune. Somme and Ancre, 1916.

    Piazza Press, Issued to subscribers by Peter Davies, 1929.

    First, limited and unexpurgated edition of this masterpiece of the First World War, published anonymously (Manning was only identified as the author shortly before his death in 1943); no. 205 of 520 numbered copies.

    £750

  3. [MAP.]

    Henan quansheng yutu 河南全省輿圖 [‘Map of the whole province of Henan’].

    [China, c. 1835.]

    Extremely rare map of the province of Henan, produced in China. We have been unable to trace this map in the Library of Congress.

    £1800

  4. [MAP.]

    Karte von Ost-China. Hankau.

    [Berlin,] Kartographische Abtheilung der Köngl. Preuss. Landes-Aufnahme, 1904.

    A map from the Royal Prussian Land Survey’s renowned 1:1,000,000 series, which was published between 1901 and 1912.

    £550

  5. [MAPS.]

    ‘Carte du Vicariat Apost. de Péking & Tche-ly Nord’.

    [China], 1896.

    Two handsome maps providing a snapshot of the region around modern Beijing and the Bohai Sea encompassed within the Vicariate Apostolic of Northern Chi-Li and the Vicariate Apostolic of Southwestern Chi-Li in 1896, showing towns, missionary residences, roads, railways, rivers and lakes, and part...

    £1800

  6. [MARANA, Giovanni Paolo (attr.).]

    Letters on the French Nation, by a Sicilian Gentleman resident in Paris, to his Friend...

    London: Printed for T. Lownds ... 1749. 

    First edition of this translation, very rare, of a work first printed in French in Paris in 1700 (see below) and, in a different translation, in English in 1704 as An agreeable Criticism of the City of Paris

    £1250

  7. MARKHAM, ‘J.’ [Gervase], G. JEFFERIES, ‘and Experienced INDIANS’, [and C.D. LESHER (editor)].

    The Citizen...

    Chambersburg, Thomas J. Wright, [c. 1839].

    Undated Chambersburg edition. Among the most popular farriery manuals in America, the Experienced Farrier remained in print almost a century after its first appearance, with this Chambersburg edition following those of Wilmington and Baltimore. Intended, like its predecessors, for the common...

    £250

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

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

    London, 1695–1706.

    The Hero of the Age, published December 1704 by the otherwise unknown Jasper Robins, is one of the rarest literary contributions to the national outpouring that accompanied the martial success of John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, in the early years of the eighteenth century. It comprises...

    £3850

  9. MARZAGLIA, Gaetano.

    Fascetto di pratiche matematiche spiegate alle persone popolari per uso del comercio umano, e civile, in questa...

    Verona, Dionisio Ramanzini, 1780.

    A lovely copy of the second edition, considerably augmented from the first of 1754, of this book of applied mathematical problems by the Veronese mathematician Gaetano Marzaglia (or Marcegaglia, 1716–1787), heavily influenced by the work of Wolff, who provides the motto to the book, and whose works...

    £650

  10. McWILLIAM, James Ormiston.

    Medical History of the Expedition to the Niger during the Years 1841-2. Comprising an Account of the...

    London: C. Adlard for John Churchill, 1843.

    First edition. A classic treatise on the Niger region and the yellow fever written by the Scottish doctor James Ormiston McWilliam, the hero of a government expedition exploring the region and its commercial opportunities, and explicitly aimed at suppressing the slave trade. When the yellow fever...

    £600

  11. MEGUSCHER, Francesco.

    Memoria … in risposta al quesito additare la migliore e più facile maniera per rimittere i boschi nelle...

    Milan, presso l’I.R. Istituto, 1847.

    First edition of this comprehensive report on the best means to reverse the deforestation of the mountains of Lombardy, in a way that could be both environmentally sustainable and economically profitable.

    £950

  12. 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...

    £6500

  13. MENNIE, Donald.

    Glimpses of China. A Series of Vandyck photogravures illustrating Chinese life and surroundings. Shanghai, A. S. 

    Watson & Co. Ltd, [1920?].

    First edition, scarce, with thirty images taken across China. Some of the captions are descriptive, but others, in keeping with the pictorialist aspects of Mennie’s photographic practice, are poetic – “Where peace and calm contentment dwell serene”, “Some dim pavilion where my lady dreams”...

    £1200

  14. MERCURIALE, Girolamo. 

    De arte gymnastica libri sex, in quibus exercitationum omnium vetustarum genera, loca, modi, facultates,...

    Venice, [Lucantonio II] Giunta, 1587. 

    Third edition of ‘the first illustrated book on gymnastics’ (Morton).  A physician occupying senior posts in the medical faculties of Padua, Bologna, Rome, and Pisa, Girolamo Mercuriale (1530–1606) draws heavily on accounts of ancient exercise to argue for its medical benefits, being the...

    £2750

  15. [MISSIONARIES.]

    Shopping list of Christian texts, signed ‘Joseph Ly’. [with:] Receipt issued by a financial office (Shou Shan...

    [China, c. 1850.]

    A shopping list of Chinese Christian texts ordered by the Catholic vicar general of Canton. The works include two sets of the Shengjing zhijie 聖經直解, a translation of Gospel readings from the Mass by Manuel Dias the Younger (1574–1659); thirty sets of the Rike cuoyao 日課撮要,...

    £1500

  16. M’LEOD, John.

    Voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Alceste, along the coast of Corea, to the Island of Lewchew; with an account of...

    London, John Murray, 1818.

    Second edition (first 1817), with five handsome aquatints, of this account of the voyage of the Alceste to China with Lord Amherst’s embassy, by the ship’s surgeon M’Leod.

    £275

  17. [MONASTICISM].

    Risposta ad alcuni aggravi fatti ai monaci nel libro, che ha il titolo di Politica, diritto, e religione.

    Milan, Francesco Agnelli, 1742.

    Only edition of this anonymous response to Giuseppe Gorini Corio’s controversial Politica, diritto, e religione, that had appeared in Milan at the start of the same year.

    £400

  18. MONETA, José Manuel, and Robert Keith HEADLAND, (ed.).

    Four Antarctic Years in the South Orkney Islands: an Annotated...

    London, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 2017.

    One man’s fascinating record of four winters in the Antarctic during the 1920s, the period of transition from the isolation of the Heroic Age to the beginnings of radio communication with the world outside.

    £50

  19. [MONTANUS, Arnoldus.]

    Ambassades mémorables de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales des Provinces Unies, vers les empereurs du Japon....

    Amsterdam, Jacob van Meurs, 1680.

    First edition in French of an important and influential study of Japan by the Dutch theologian and historian Arnoldus Montanus, based on eyewitness accounts from two Dutch East India Company (VOC) missions to Japan in 1649 and 1661.

    £3500

  20. MORELLET, André, Abbé.

    Lettres inédites … sur l’histoire politique et littéraire des années 1806 et 1807 …

    Paris, Ladvocat [and London, Martin Bossange], 1822.

    First edition of a collection of fourteen letters from the Abbé Morellet (1727–1819) to an anonymous correspondent in Italy, published as a supplement to his Mémoires sur le XVIIIe siècle et sur la Révolution (1821).

    £200