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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.
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  1. [KERNER, Johann Georg.]

    Reise über den Sund.

    Tübingen, in der J.G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1803.

    Rare first edition of this historical, political and economic analysis of Sweden, in epistolary form, complete with a folding table detailing land tax revenues by region.

    £250

  2. KING, Samuel William.

    The Italian Valleys of the Pennine Alps: a Tour through all the Romantic and Less-Frequented ‘Vals’ of...

    London: W. Clowes and Sons for John Murray, 1858.

    First edition. The traveller and scientist King (1821-1868), who was a member of the Alpine Club, made this expedition through the Alps with his wife, and explains in his opening chapter that, ‘Our project was, after crossing the Alps, to explore and traverse, from head to foot, all the remote...

    £450

  3. LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward.

    The Mint. A Day-Book of the R.A.F. Depot between August and December 1922 with Later Notes, by 352087...

    London: The Alden Press for Jonathan Cape, 1955.

    First British edition, the trade issue. 'One of Lawrence’s avowed purposes in joining the RAF, though not the only one, was to write of the ranks from the inside. He began immediately making notes when he enlisted in 1922. With his dismissal in January 1923, because of unfavourable publicity,...

    £120

  4. LEIBNIZ, Gottfried Wilhelm.

    Oeuvres de Leibniz publiées pour la première fois d’après les manuscrits originaux avec notes...

    Paris, Firmin Didot, 1859-1875.

    A handsome seven-volume edition of the correspondence and historical and political writings of the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), the ‘last universal genius’, edited by Louis-Alexandre Foucher de Careil (1826–1891), with texts in French, German, and Latin. The second volume...

    £250

  5. LELAND, John.

    The Itinerary of John Leland, in or about the Years 1535-1543. Edited by Lucy Toulmin Smith, with a Foreword by Thomas...

    London, Centaur Press Ltd, 1964.

    The authoritative edition of Leland’s Itinerary, a monument of English bibliography and antiquarian research. The Itinerary comprises the notes of the antiquary John Leland (c. 1503–1552) on his journeys through England and Wales during the dissolution of the monasteries. According...

    £50

  6. [LE MERCIER DE LA RIVIÈRE, Pierre Paul].

    Die glückliche Nation, oder der Staat von Felizien. Ein Muster der vollkommensten Freyheit...

    Leipzig, Voss, 1794.

    Very rare first German edition of Le Mercier de la Rivière’s physiocratic utopia L’heureuse nation, ou Relation du gouvernement des Féliciens, which had first appeared in French in 1792.

    £1250

  7. 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

  8. 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

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. [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 written by a woman for a readership of women.

    £1500

  12. [MACKY, John.]

    A Journey through England. In familiar Letters from a Gentleman here, to his Friend abroad … The Second Edition,...

    London: Printed for J. Hooke … 1722.

    Second edition of Vol. I, more than a hundred pages longer than the edition of 1714 and long delayed because ‘immediately after the Publication …. Queen Anne’s Death, and King George’s Accession to the Throne, took up so much of the Attention of Mankind, that the Author could...

    £950

  13. [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

  14. 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

  15. 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

  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. 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

  18. [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.

    £4500

  19. MOSZKOWSKI, Alexander [and H.J. STENNING (trans.).] 

    The Isles of Wisdom. 

    London, George Routledge & sons, 1924.

    First English edition of Alexander Moszkowski’s dystopian satire.  Moszkowski imagines a visit to a series of South-East Asian islands which each subscribe unreservedly to a philosophical school of thought.  These utopias are absurd: people’s notions of philosophical purity prevent them...

    £230

  20. 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