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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.
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  1. LÉVI-STRAUSS, Claude.

    The Tupí-Cawahíb.

    Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 1948.

    A set of offprints of four articles by Lévi-Strauss from the Smithsonian’s Handbook of South American Indians, inscribed by the author. In each article Claude Lévy-Strauss (1908–2009) provides an illustrated introduction to an Amazonian group, recording their history, social and political...

    £300

  2. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    Filibusters in Barbary (Record of a Visit to the Sous).

    London, Grayson & Grayson, [1932].

    First edition, scarce in the dust-jacket, ‘an account of his travels which Lewis had written after a holiday with his wife in French Morocco and the Spanish Sahara. The book … emerged as one of the liveliest travel-books of the time. Like all of Lewis’s writing, it was quirky and opinionated,...

    £500

  3. LIVINGSTONE, David.

    Explorations dans l’intérieur de l’Afrique Australe et voyages à travers le continent de Saint-Paul de...

    Paris: Imprimerie de Ch. Lahure et Cie for Librairie de L. Hachette et Cie, 1859.

    First appearance in French of Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in Southern Africa (1857), describing his early years in the region and the first of his three great expeditions across the continent: ‘Livingstone’s services to African geography during thirty years are almost...

    £250

  4. LIVINGSTONE, David. 

    Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa; including a Sketch of sixteen Years’ Residence in the...

    London, John Murray, 1857. 

    First edition.  ‘Livingstone’s services to African geography during thirty years are almost unequalled; he covered about a third of the continent from the Cape to the Equator and from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.  He made three great expeditions; in 1853-6 (described in this book),...

    £500

  5. [LONDON ASSURANCE CORPORATION.]

    By-laws, orders, and rules, for the good government of the corporation of the London assurance....

    London, [n.p.], 1722.

    First edition of the by-laws of the London Assurance Corporation, which, along with The Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, was constituted and granted sole rights, excepting private individuals, to the granting of assurance and bottomry by ‘The Bubble Act’ of 1720. The right to self-govern, reflected...

    £550

  6. [LOQUET, Marie-Françoise].

    Voyage de Sophie et d’Eulalie, au Palais du vrai bonheur; ouvrage pour servir de guide dans les voies...

    Paris, Charles-Pierre Berton, 1781.

    First edition of this rare utopian voyage to the Palace of True Happiness, written by a woman for a readership of women, our copy with the eighteenth-century ownership inscription of a female reader.

    £1500

  7. [MABBUT, George].

    Sir Isaac Newton’s tables for renewing and purchasing the leases of cathedral-churches and colleges, according...

    London, printed for Thomas Astley, 1742

    Sixth edition, first published in 1686, this issue was sometimes also published with a separate title page and imprint reading, ‘The money’d man’s pocket-book’, London, 1742’ immediately preceding the title-page of the second part. A series of tables calculating the amounts owed on leases based...

    £125

  8. MACDONALD, Alexander.

    ‘Instructions and regulations for the formations and movements of horse artillery by Captain A: Macdonald...

    [England, 1827.]

    Scarce manuscript of an unpublished work on the formations and movements of horse artillery by the distinguished soldier and Waterloo veteran Major-General Alexander Macdonald CB (1776–1840), illustrated with twenty-five coloured diagrams.

    £1500

  9. MADDEN, Dodgson Hamilton.

    The Diary of Master William Silence: A Study of Shakespeare & of Elizabethan Sport.

    London, New York, & Bombay, Longmans, Green, & Co., 1897.

    First edition of Madden’s reimagination of Elizabethan sport, derived from passages from Shakespeare. Though a legal writer and prominent jurist, being appointed attorney-general of Ireland in 1889, the best known publication of Dodgson Hamilton Madden (1840–1928) remains the Diary of Master...

    £120

  10. [MAISTRE, Xavier de.]

    Voyage autour de ma chambre par M. le Chev. X*** *** O. A. S. D. S. M. S. [Officier au service de Sa Majesté...

    Turin, 1794 [Lausanne, Isaac Hignou, 1795].

    First edition, rare, of the celebrated fantasy novel Voyage around my Room, a parody of the grand travel narrative tradition, written by Xavier de Maistre (1763–1852), a Savoyard officer in the army of the Kingdom of Piedmont–Sardinia, during the forty-two days he spent in solitary confinement...

    £2800

  11. [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

  12. [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

  13. [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

  14. 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

  15. [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

  16. 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

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. 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

  20. 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