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.-
ABBEVILLE, Claude d’.
Histoire de la mission des peres Capucins en l’isle de Maragnan et terres circonvoisines ou est traicte...
Paris, François Huby, 1614.
Second edition, enlarged and revised from the first edition published earlier the same year, a handsome copy, of the first written account of the Capuchin mission to Maranhão, an island on the coast of Brazil, of which, Sabin notes, this is the earliest mention. In 1612 the mission, composed...
£30000
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[ABC.]
Petite géographie amusante abécédaire nouveau offrant pour chaque lettre de l’alphabet une carte coloriée avec l’explication...
C. Lehuby, ‘Librairie de l’enfance et de la jeunesse’, [1851].
A charming and very rare ABC intended to teach children European geography, from A for Allemagne to Z for Zara in Dalmatia, published just a few years after the upheavals of the revolutions of 1848.
£3750
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ADRICHEM, Christian van; Francesco BALDELLI, translator.
Gerusalemme e suoi dintorni ai tempi di Gesù Cristo. Mappa e...
Genoa, Tipografia arcivescovile, 1882.
Scarce first edition thus of Baldelli’s sixteenth-century translation of this guide to Jerusalem for pilgrims by the Dutch cartographer Christian van Adrichem, instrumental in popularising the Stations of the Cross and the basis for maps of the Holy Land well into the eighteenth century.
£200
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ALEXANDER, William, attributed.
The Costume of the Russian Empire, illustrated by a Series of seventy-three Engravings....
London, ‘printed for William Miller … by Howlett and Brimmer … 1803’, [c. 1823].
A later reprint of a handsome costume book devoted to the Russian empire, first printed by Samuel Gosnell for William Miller in 1803, illustrated with seventy-three coloured stipple engravings.
£950
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ANDERSEN, Hendrik Christian.
Création d’un centre mondial de communication.
Paris, 1913.
First French editions of both parts of this ambitious urban planning project envisioning a utopian world capital, in which art and architecture would function as vehicles of world peace.
£2250
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[ATLAS.]
School Atlas; or, Key to Goldsmith’s geographical Copy-Books …
London, Richard Phillips, [1810–11].
First edition(?), very rare. The maps include world maps in globe and on Mercator’s projection (in which Australia features as New Holland), Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America, England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, West Indies, ‘Hindoostan’, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire,...
£475
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[ATO PHOTOGRAPHIC ASSOCIATION.]
Album of 100 gelatin silver prints of Tianjin (Tientsin), the Hai (Peiho) estuary, and Beijing...
[Circa 1930s.]
An attractive example of the commercially available albums produced by the Ato Photographic Association in the 1920s–30s. The present album is devoted to the area formerly known as Zhili or Chihli, encompassing Beijing and Tianjin. Small groups of images are devoted to the Hai forts and to...
£2500
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[ATO PHOTOGRAPHIC ASSOCIATION.]
Album of 100 gelatin silver prints of Fuzhou (Foochow) and Yunnan.
[1930s.]
Includes panoramas of Fuzhou apparently taken at different dates (the captions state a population of variously 600,000 and 700,000), and scenes of Kunming, the capital of Yunan province. There is an interesting short series on railway engineering in Yunnan province, and images of zinc mining, and poppy...
£2500
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BALLOU, Adin.
Practical Christian Socialism: a conversational Exposition of the true System of human Society; in three Parts, viz:...
Hopedale and New York, by the author and Fowlers and Wells, 1854.
First exposition of Ballou’s most important work, an explication of the principles behind his utopian Hopedale Community, established in Milford, Massachusetts in 1841.
£450
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BARRINGTON, George.
A Voyage to Botany Bay with a Description of the Country, Manners, Customs, Religion, &c. of the Natives by...
London, C. Lowndes for H.D. Symonds, [c. 1800-1802, A1 watermarked ‘1800’].
First and only combined edition, second issue. George Barrington was a ‘genteel young Irishman known for his sartorial elegance, his command of the etiquette of romantic sensibility, and for his prowess at picking pockets’ (Garvey p. 2). The fascinating contrast between Barrington’s charming...
£875
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[BARSANTI, Pier Vincenzo.]
Della futura rinnovazione de’ cieli e della terra e de’ suoi abitatori libri tre.
[Florence,] Stamperia Bonducciana, 1780.
First edition of this polemical utopia by the Tuscan Dominican Pier Vincenzo Barsanti, which provoked the ire of Jansenists and led to accusations of Molinism and millenarism.
£675
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BEAUMONT, Joseph.
Psyche: or Loves Mysterie in XX. Canto’s: displaying the Intercourse betwixt Christ and the Soule …
London, Printed by John Dawson for George Boddington, 1648.
First edition of this lengthy religious epic representing the journey of the personified Soul from England to the Holy Land and back, written by Beaumont, one of the Royalist fellows ejected from Cambridge in 1644.
£1250
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[BEIJING.]
Album of Beijing and environs.
[1920s.]
A meticulously presented and captioned series of views, by a tourist or resident in Beijing (then Peking) with a thorough approach to recording their experience of the city and environs.
£1500
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[BEIJING.]
[Cover title:] ‘The most interesting views of Peiping’.
[c. 1900–1920.]
A very good example of a commercial souvenir album of Beijing and the Great Wall of China.
£1750
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[BEIJING.]
[Cover title:] ‘The most interesting views of Peiping’.
[C. 1900–1910.]
A very unusual commercial album of Beijing, with thirty-eight hand-coloured scenes of the city, probably taken using a swing-lens panoramic camera.
£2000
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BELL, Walter Dalrymple Maitland.
The wanderings of an elephant hunter.
London, The Offices of “Country Life” and George Newnes, and New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923.
First edition of Bell’s first work, describing his ‘early elephant hunting days in the Karamojo region’ of Africa, in modern-day Uganda.
£275
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BONNARD, Camille Marie.
Le pélerin, ou souvenirs de Rome. Tome premier [all published].
Paris, Camille Bonnard, 1829.
Rare first and only edition of this handsomely illustrated work on Rome by the French painter and engraver Camille Bonnard (1794–1870), with his autograph presentation note pasted inside.
£1500
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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
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[BOUCHET, Jean.]
Les triu[m]phes de la noble et amoureuse dame, et l’art de honnestement aymer, compose par le Traverseur des...
Paris, Estienne Caveiller for Pierre Sergent, 6 June 1539.
Unrecorded issue of Jean Bouchet’s contemplative vernacular work of moral theology in prose and verse explicitly intended for a female readership, following the personified Soul in dialogue with several virtues as she attempts to combat the forces of earthly temptation with the power of divine grace,...
£4500
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[BOUDIER DE VILLEMERT, Pierre-Joseph.]
L’Andrometrie, ou examen philosophique de l’homme. Par Monsieur l’Abbé de Villemaire.
Paris, chez Brunet, 1753.
First editions of two scarce works by the philosopher, moralist, and Parisian avocat Boudier de Villemert (1716–1801), best known as the author of L’Ami des Femmes, Le monde joué involving visits from extra-terrestrials both in ancient times and in the eighteenth century.
£2500