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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. 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

  2. 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.

    £1500

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. GALIER, W.H.

    A visit to Blestland.

    London, George Robertson & Co., 1896.

    First edition of this novel of utopian socialism which lambasts capitalism and religion. Blestland is a republican workers’ paradise located on a different planet which reveals how the divisions of earth can be abolished: by limiting ‘the enormous power for evil which capital can wield’....

    £280

  6. GARCIA, Gregorio.

    Origen de los Indios de el nuevo mundo, e Indias Occidentales, averiguado con discurso de opiniones por el padre...

    Madrid, Francisco Martinez Abad, 1729.

    Second enlarged edition (first 1607) of an extraordinary work on the origin of the Americans by the Spanish Dominican missionary Gregorio Garcia (c. 1556–1627), ‘a work of vast erudition’ (Sabin).

    £1200

  7. ‘G.’ [i.e. Terence Ian Fytton ARMSTRONG].

    Annotations on Some Minor Writings of “T.E. Lawrence” by G.

    London: W. Graves for Eric Partridge, Ltd. at the Scholartis Press, 1935.

    First edition, no. 484 of 500 copies. Annotations was the second bibliographical work on Lawrence to be published, and was written by the poet, author, bibliographer, and bookseller T.I.F. Armstrong (AKA ‘John Gawsworth’), who possessed ‘a bibliographic talent that led Lawrence Durrell to...

    £75

  8. GOLOVNIN, Vasilii Mikhailovich.

    Recollections of Japan, comprising a particular account of the religion, language, government,...

    London, Henry Colburn, 1819.

    First edition in English of Golovnin’s account of Japan and the Japanese, derived from his Russian original of 1816, with a preface on British relations with Japan and an appendix detailing Khvostov and Davydov’s fur-trading voyages to the northwest coast of America. Recollections followed Colburn’s...

    £1000

  9. GONZÁLES DE MENDOZA, Juan, and Robert PARKE, translator. 

    The Historie of the great and mightie Kingdome of China,...

    London, Printed by J. Wolfe for Edward White, 1588 [or 1589]. 

    First edition in English, rare, of the first significant European study of China, ‘one of the outstanding “best-sellers” of the sixteenth century’ (Boxer). 

    £50000

  10. GUIGNES, Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de.

    Voyages à Peking, Manille et l’Île de France, faits dans l’intervalle des années 1784...

    Paris, l’Imprimerie Impériale, 1808.

    First edition, the complete four-volume set, containing a survey of Chinese history and customs, a narrative of the author’s journey to Beijing as part of the Dutch East India embassy in 1794–5, and a magnificent folio atlas featuring 97 beautiful illustrations and intricate maps.

    £6500

  11. HAKLUYT, Richard.

    The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land, to the most...

    Imprinted at London by George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, Deputies to Christopher Barker … 1589.

    First edition, a fine copy, with the world map, in a strictly contemporary London binding, of the first collection of English voyages.

    £350000

  12. HAKLUYT, Richard.

    The principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over-land,...

    London, George Bishop, Ralph Newberie, and Robert Barker, 1598 [– 1600].

    Second edition, first issue of ‘Hakluyt’s monumental masterpiece, and the great prose epic of the Elizabethan period’ (Penrose), complete with the section on the conquest of Cadiz by Essex (vol. I, pp. 607-619) ordered suppressed by Elizabeth I in 1599 (in ESTC state 1a).

    £20000

  13. HAREL, Charles.

    Ménage sociétaire ou Moyen d’augmenter son bien-être en diminuant sa dépense, avec indication de quelques...

    Paris, Bureau de la Phalange, à la librairie Sociale, 1839.

    1. First edition of this work by the entrepreneur and inventor Charles Harel (1771-1852), a friend and disciple of Charles Fourier’s. This plan describes Harel’s project for the founding of a community of 200 celibates: a utopia of communal life detailing rules (‘love’, ‘the library’etc.)...

    £975

  14. HAWTREY, George Procter.

    Caramella. A story of the lotus eaters up to date.

    Bristol, J. W. Arrowsmith, London, Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co., [1899].

    First edition of this utopian novel exploring the bliss of Caramella. Caramella is a land visited by Odysseus who sent crew members ashore, where they consumed the lotus fruit and became addicted, ‘forgetting all thoughts of return’ (Odyssey, book nine). In Hawtrey’s novel, this fruit makes...

    £240

  15. HEBER, Reginald, and Nicolas BARKER (editor).

    A Letter from India.

    The Roxburghe Club, 2020.

    'I do not expect that with fair prospects of eminence at home, you should go to the Ganges for a mitre,’ wrote Sir Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, President of the Board of Commissioners for Indian Affairs, in 1819 to Reginald Heber at Hodnet in Shropshire, but in vain. Despite a growing reputation...

    £100

  16. HELMAN, Isidore-Stanislas-Henri.

    Faits mémorables des empereurs de la Chine, tirés des annales Chinoises, dédiés à Madame,...

    Paris, chez l’auteur … et chez M. Ponce, [1788].

    Two handsome engraved works by the French engraver and printseller Helman (1743–1806/9), here on uncut sheets, the first depicting scenes from Chinese history, the second episodes in the life of Confucius (Kong Fuzi).

    £6000

  17. HILL, Rowland.

    Journal of a Tour through the North of England and Parts of Scotland. With Remarks on the present State of the established...

    London: Printed by T. Gillet … and sold at Surr[e]y Chapel; also by T. Chapman [and seven others in London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow]. 1799

    First edition, an account of a Scottish tour conducted in July –September 1798 by the eccentric evangelical preacher Rowland Hill, followed by lengthy remarks on the Scottish church in a letter to the Baptist minister James Haldane. There is another issue with the title Journal through the North...

    £325

  18. H.M.S. COMUS and H.M.S. TOURMALINE. [HELBY, Harold Wildey Hasler.]   

    Log Book.  Hong Kong, Singapore, Palau, Yokohama,...

    Dec 1881–Feb 1884. 

    A characterful log book charting the voyage of Royal Navy steamer H.M.S. Comus, beginning with its berth in Hong Kong and following its course around the Pacific, before its passage home across the Atlantic. It records the technicalities of cruising by steam; the significant international...

    £3000

  19. HOWITT, William.

    The rural and domestic life of Germany: with characteristic sketches of its cities and scenery, collected in a...

    London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1842

    A fine copy of the first edition of Howitt’s account of his travels in Germany and Austria, and one of the best books in English about German life at the time. Howitt had moved with his family to Heidelberg in 1840 and stayed in Germany for more than two years on account of the education of his older...

    £100

  20. HUBER, Victor Aimé (and James Robertson CRAUFURD, translator).

    Stories of Spanish life, from the German of Huber....

    London, Henry Colburn, 1837.

    First edition in English; rare. In his Hand-book, Richard Ford described it as ‘one of the best sketches of this original people and country’. The German original, Skizzen aus Spanien, had appeared in 1828.

    £525