women travellers

T h e A r m c h a i r Tr a v e l l e r N o 4 · B e r n a r d Q u a r i t c h L t d · 2 0 1 6
 introduction

I confess, I am malicious enough to desire, that the world should see, to how much better purpose the LADIES travel than their LORDS; and that, whilst it is
surfeited with Male-Travels, all in the same tone and stuffed with the same trifles; a lady has the skill to strike out a new path, and to embellish a worn-
out subject, with variety of fresh and elegant entertainment (Mary Astell, 1724)

Female travellers have been the subject of studies such as Spinsters Abroad and Wayward Women, and exhibitions including Off the Beaten Track
(National Portrait Gallery, London) in recent years. This catalogue combines important manuscripts and association copies of well-known titles by Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu, Lady Isabel Burton, Mary Kingsley, and Freya Stark, with similarly remarkable but often overlooked books, photograph albums,
and manuscripts by less well known figures.
United by their gender, the travellers whose writings are presented in this catalogue are very diverse: they range from dwellers in the tropics to polar
explorers; from travellers on foot and horseback to pilots and drivers soaring through the skies and speeding along roads; and from linguists assimilating
their host cultures and religions to ‘accidental travellers’, carving a life and career out of travel writings rather than suffering the fate of women widowed
too young, supposedly tragically unmarried, or overlooked for other reasons.
Many of these travellers contributed significantly to botanical and scientific exploration and their achievements were recognised by high honours (Freya
Stark, items 10-11; Anne Lindbergh, item 28; Margaret Mee, item 40); some found themselves at the nexus of historical political events and documented
them both as journalists and in their biographies (for example, Clare Sheridan, item 13); while yet others followed their calling as missionaries and
contributed to the spread of health care and the knowledge of languages (items 18, 32 – by the first Englishwoman in Tibet – and 33).
Whether exploring, visiting, or residing in places only known to many of their contemporaries (of both sexes) through literature or iconography alone,
these women have inspired admiration and envy, dismissal and discussion, but rarely indifference in those who followed their travels on maps and
through their writings. As Isabella Bird famously said: ‘Travellers are privileged to do the most improper things’ — and to show their readers the world
through new eyes.
indexes may be found at the end of the catalogue

Women Exploring the Middle East items 1-13

BERNARD QUARITCH LTD—40 SOUTH AUDLEY STREET—LONDON W1K 2PR
Into Africa items 14-19
www.quaritch.com— +44 (0)20 7297 4888—rarebooks@quaritch.com Poles, Peaks & Skies items 20-30

Asian Adventures items 31-35

Anke Timmermann: a.timmermann@quaritch.com—Mark James: m.james@quaritch.com
South America & The Tropics items 36-40
 Women Exploring the Middle East

‘I LIKE TRAVELLING EXTREMELY’ – LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU’S ONLY SURVIVING LETTER FROM TURKEY
 The letter was written en route to Constantinople, whence Lady Mary (1689-1762) had
set out with the ambassadorial party. The recipient, Mrs Frances Hewet, from whom she
requests a reply as ‘very beneficial to your precious soul’, was one of Lady Mary’s
longstanding correspondents, 21 years her senior, and married to architect, landowner
and surveyor-general under George I, Sir Thomas Hewet. The author gave the date 1
April 1717 for all her letters from Adrianople, but this letter was most probably written on
18 April 1717, which is the date given in Lady Mary’s ‘Heads of LM´s Letters From
Turkey’ (cf. R. Halsband, The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford:
1965), I, p. 308, n. 6).
In this letter Lady Mary declares, ‘I like travelling extremely & have no reason to complain
of having had too little of it, having now gone through all ye Turkish Dominions in Europe,
not to reckon my Journeys through Hungary, Bohemia, & ye whole Tour of Germany […]
[;] hitherto all I see is so new to me, ’tis like a fresh scene of an opera every day’.
Most interestingly, Lady Mary mentions her son, whom she had famously had inoculated
1. MONTAGU, Lady Mary Wortley. Autograph letter against smallpox at Adrianople, to spare him the scarring she had suffered from the
[apparently signed with initials obscured by ink oxidisation] disease, and indeed to save his life – her brother had not survived the disease. In a letter
to Frances Hewet. Adrianople, ‘1’ [?but 18] April [1717]. to Sarah Chiswell written in the same month, Lady Mary had announced her decision to
3 pp. on a bifolium, 4to (202 x 160mm), final p. with introduce smallpox vaccination to England on her return – a plan she would follow
address and docket note, half of seal intact, folded twice through popularising the vaccination by having her daughter publicly inoculated at the
horizontally and twice vertically for posting, recent linen royal court of George I. In this letter she confirms his continued health, which suggests
folder with gilt red morocco title label on upper board; that this letter dates from after his inoculation: ‘my son never was better in his Life’.
somewhat foxed, creased and affected by ink oxidisation This letter is a unique survival, since it is ‘the only actual letter to survive of all those she
causing small losses along outer folds and one corner, wrote from Turkey’ (I. Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: 1999), p. 144, n.
marginal seal tear on l. 2 affecting the ends of six lines, 29). By contrast, her celebrated ‘Turkish Embassy Letters’ (Letters of the Right
historical reinforcement and restoration along outer folds Honorable Lady M––y W––y M––e: Written during Her Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa),
and seal tear; provenance: sale, Sotheby’s, 4 November which were published in 1763 and thus in the year after her death, are, according to
1898, lot 181 – John Davies Enys (1837-1912, Enys 969; on Halsband, not ‘the actual letters that she sent to her friends and relations’, but a travel
deposit at the Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro; ‘Enys memoir in epistolary form (Halsband I, pp. xiv-xv). This letter was first printed in the 1805
Collection of Autographs’, Bonham’s London, 28 edition of Lady Mary’s Works, and that text was used for Halsband’s edition of the Letters
September 2004, lot 378). £5000 + VAT in EU (I, pp. 308-309), as the original was unavailable to him; in addition to numerous
differences in punctuation and spelling, the actual wording of this letter varies in some
This letter is the only original letter that survives from fifteen places from that printed by Halsband. Where there is damage at the close of the
the period of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish letter, the readings that complete the text in Halsband cannot, in fact, be accommodated
years following her husband’s appointment to in the space available; this suggests that the letter was already damaged prior to its
ambassador of Turkey in 1716. printing in 1805.
 Women Exploring
Women thethe
Exploring Middle East
Middle East

‘A LADY HAS THE SKILL TO STRIKE OUT A NEW PATH,

AND TO EMBELLISH A WORN-OUT SUBJECT’

2. [MONTAGU, Lady Mary Wortley and ?John CLELAND, editor]. Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M--y W---y M----e:
Written during her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa to Persons of Distinction, Men of Letters, &c. in Different Parts of
Europe. Which Contain, among other Curious Relations, Accounts of the Policy and Manners of the Turks; Drawn from
Sources that have been Inaccessible to other Travellers. The Second Edition. London: T. Becket and P.A. de Hondt, 1763.
3 volumes, 8vo (152 x 91mm), pp. I: xii, [3 (advertisement)], [1 (blank)], 165, [1 (blank)]; II: [4 (title, verso blank, half-title,
verso blank)], 167, [1 (blank)]; III: [4 (title, verso blank, half-title, verso blank)], 134, [2 (blank l.)]; retaining half-titles, but
bound without final blank l. I, M4; a few light spots, a few small paper flaws, bifolia II, A1.2 and III A1.2 bound in reverse
order; contemporary English full polished calf gilt, boards with gilt-ruled borders, spines gilt in compartments, gilt morocco
lettering-pieces in 2; somewhat rubbed and scuffed, splitting on joints, lacking 2 lettering-pieces, otherwise a very good set;
provenance: Sir William Pierce Ashe à Court, 1st Bt (1747-1817, engraved armorial bookplates on upper pastedowns) –
‘Hope’ (inscriptions on front free endpapers or flyleaves). £175
Second edition. The celebrated ‘Embassy Letters’ record Lady Mary’s travels in the company of her husband
Edward Wortley Montagu, on his ambassadorial mission to Turkey. During the course of the embassy she
acquired a wide experience of Turkish culture, studying with an Islamic scholar, as well as winning the
confidence of the local women. The letters were rewritten by Lady Mary after her return to England and then
circulated in manuscript; following her death – and despite the efforts of her daughter, the Countess of Bute –
the letters were published by Becket and de Hondt in 1763 and this second edition appeared later in the year, to
be followed by a third edition later in 1763. (A spurious fourth Additional Volume, which was probably the work
of John Cleland, was also published in 1767 by Becket and de Hondt.) The preface by Mary Astell (which is
signed ‘M.A.’) was written in 1724, and makes the case for the superiority of female travel writers over their
male counterparts: ‘I confess, I am malicious enough to desire, that the world should see, to how much better
purpose the ladies travel than their lords; and that, whilst it is surfeited with Male-Travels, all in the same tone
and stuffed with the same trifles; a lady has the skill to strike out a new path, and to embellish a worn-out
subject, with variety of fresh and elegant entertainment’ (I, p. viii).
Lady Mary’s success as a letter-writer was instantaneous, and Letters was admired by both Johnson and
Voltaire; the latter considered that, ‘[i]l règne surtout dans l’ouvrage de mylady Montague un esprit de
philosophie et de liberté qui caractérise sa nation’ (Oeuvres completes (Paris: 1821), vol. XLIII, p. 336). The
popularity of Letters continue into the present time, and Robinson comments that, ‘I should not think they
have been out of print since [their first publication in 1763]’.
Atabey 829; Weber 477; for the 1st ed., cf.: Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 32; Rothschild 1452.
 Women Exploring
Women thethe
Exploring Middle East
Middle East
A HANDSOMELY-BOUND SET
FROM THE LIBRARY OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU’S
GREAT-GREAT-GREAT GRANDSON

3. MONTAGU, Lady Mary Wortley and James DALLAWAY, editor. The Works
of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Including her
Correspondence, Poems and Essays. Published by Permission from her Genuine
Papers. London: W. Flint (I), T. Davison (II-III), T. Gillet (IV), and W. Flint and J.
Adlard (V) for Richard Phillips, 1803.
5 volumes, 8vo (185 x 110mm), pp. I: [i]-v, [vi-viii (blank, part-title, verso blank)],
[9]-124, [2 (part-title, verso blank)], [147]-309, [1 (imprint)]; II: [i]-xi, [1 (blank)],
[1]-339, [1 (imprint)]; III: [4 (title, imprint, part-title, verso blank)], [1]-238; IV: [4
(title, imprint, part title, blank)], [1]-326; V: [4 (title, imprint, part-title, verso
blank)], [1]-96, ‘89*’-‘95*’, [1 (blank), [97]-292, [35 (general index)], [1
(publisher’s advertisement)]; mezzotint portrait frontispiece after Sir Godfrey
Kneller and one stipple-engraved portrait after Caroline Watson, 12 engraved
facsimiles, 6 folding and 3 folding and printed on recto and verso; some light
spotting and occasional marking, bound without final [?blank] ll. I, L8 and III, Y4,
old marginal repair on V, R1; 19th-century full black, straight-grained morocco
gilt, boards with borders of gilt rules enclosing blind rolls, spines gilt in
compartments, lettered directly in 2, others decorated with gilt quatrefoil tools,
gilt-ruled board-edges, turn-ins roll-tooled in gilt, light-blue watered silk
endleaves, all edges gilt, pink silk markers (some minor wear on markers);
extremities lightly rubbed and bumped, minor cracking on joints, nevertheless a
very handsome set; provenance: Edward Montagu Stuart Granville, 1st Earl of
Wharncliffe (1827-1899, engraved armorial bookplates on upper pastedowns) –
early pencilled annotations in vols I and V – Anthony Robert Alwyn Hobson
(1921-2004, bookplates on upper pastedowns). £950
First edition, thick post octavo issue. Following the The problems with Dallaway’s edition caused Lady
publication of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters in Mary’s descendants to produce their own edition,
1763 (cf. the previous item), her family somewhat drawing upon the family papers, and the new text was
reluctantly authorised the publication of her Works in issued in three volumes in 1837 under the title The
this edition edited by Dallaway. While the publication of Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Edited
the material was welcomed by contemporary critics, by her Great Grandson Lord Wharncliffe. Despite the
Dallaway’s editorship was censured by some; for statement on the title-page that it was edited by James
example, The Edinburgh Review wrote, ‘[t]hese Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, 1st Baron
volumes are so very entertaining, that we ran them all Wharncliffe, the editorial work was undertaken by his
through immediately upon their coming into our aunt Lady Louisa Stuart (1757-1851), the youngest
possession; and at the same time contain so little that is granddaughter of Lady Mary; although she is credited
either difficult or profound, that we may venture to give as the author of the ‘Introductory Anecdotes’ which
some account of them to our readers without farther preface the work, she explained in a letter to her niece
deliberation. The only thing that disappointed us in this Louisa Bromley that it might benefit from a lord’s name
publication, was the memoir of the writer’s life, prefixed appearing as the editor (cf. S.C.E. Ross and P. Salzman
by the editor to her correspondence. In point of (eds), Editing Early Modern Women (Cambridge: 2016),
composition, it is very tame and inelegant, and rather p. 130).
excites than gratifies the curiosity of the reader, by the This set, which has been handsomely and expensively
imperfect manner in which the facts are narrated’ (vol. II bound, is notable for its provenance: it was previously
(1803), p. 507). Contemporary advertisements in other
in the library of the 1st Earl of Wharncliffe, who was the
publications by Phillips state that the edition was great-great-great grandson of Lady Mary and the
published in two issues: the present issue on thick post grandson of the 1st Baron Wharncliffe. Volumes I and V
octavo paper and a smaller edition in foolscap octavo have been neatly annotated in pencil by a 19th-century
format (cf. the following item). hand, which has diligently added footnotes which
appeared in volumes I and III of the 1837 edition, relating
to the ‘Introductory Anecdotes’, and also (in volume III)
a few notes which do not appear in that edition.
Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 32.
 Women Exploring
Women thethe
Exploring Middle East
Middle East

4. MONTAGU, Lady Mary Wortley and James DALLAWAY, editor.

The Works. London: W. Flint (I and V), Thomas Davison (II-III), and T.
Gillet (IV) for Richard Phillips, 1803.
5 volumes, 12mo (171 x 97mm), pp. I: [i]-v, [vi-viii (blank, part-title,
verso blank)], [9]-124, [2 (part-title, verso blank)], [147]-309, [1
(plates)]; II: [i]-xi, [1 (blank)], [1]-339, [1 (imprint)]; III: [4 (title, imprint,
part-title, verso blank)], [1]-238; IV: [4 (title, imprint, part-title, verso
blank)], [1]-326; V: [4 (title, imprint, part-title, blank)], [1]-96, ‘89*’-
‘95*’, [1 (blank)], [97]-292, [35 (general index)], [1 (publisher’s
advertisement)]; mezzotint portrait frontispiece by Freeman after Sir
Godfrey Kneller and one stipple-engraved portrait by Freeman, 12
engraved facsimiles, 6 folding and 3 folding and printed on recto and
verso; some light browning and offsetting, and occasional marking,
frontispiece trimmed touching imprint, bound without final blank ll. I,
G12 and IV, Q2; contemporary English full polished calf, spines gilt in
compartments, gilt morocco lettering-pieces in 2, board-edges roll-
tooled in gilt, all edges speckled blue; extremities lightly rubbed and
scuffed, a few light marks, some small chips or splits at spine-ends,
otherwise a very good set; provenance: George William Frederick
Osborne, 6th Duke of Leeds (1775-1838, engraved armorial bookplates
on upper pastedowns) – pressmark labels on upper pastedowns.
£350

First edition, foolscap octavo issue. An advertisement in the second edition of William Godwin’s Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, which was
published by Phillips in 1804, states that The Works were published ‘[i]n five volumes, elegantly printed in thick post-octavo, price 2l. in
boards [...] also a small edition in five volumes, foolscap octavo price 25s. in boards’ (IV, 2F4v).
Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 32.
 Women Exploring the Middle East

5. [TULLY, Miss]. Narrative of a Ten Years’ Residence at Tripoli in Africa: From the Original Correspondence in the Possession of the
Family of the Late Richard Tully, Esq. the British Consul. Comprising Authentic Memoirs and Anecdotes of the Reigning Bashaw, his Family,
and other Persons of Distinction; also, an Account of the Domestic Manners of the Moors, Arabs, and Turks. Second Edition. London: Cox and
Baylis for Henry Colburn, 1817.
4to (275 x 215mm), pp. xiii, [1 (blank)], [2 (‘Royal
Family of Tripoli’, list of plates)], 376; hand-coloured
aquatint frontispiece and 6 hand-coloured aquatint
plates by R. Havell and Sons, et al., all with tissue
guards, one engraved folding map by Neele; some
occasional light spotting or marking, skilfully- Second edition. No matter whether the author of this work – mentioned in the Preface
repaired paper flaw/tear on D3, very short marginal rather than on the title, and a mystery unsolved to this day – was the sister or (as stated from
tear on map, title skilfully laid down; 20th-century this edition onwards) the sister-in-law of Richard Tully, her Narrative of a Ten Years’
British quarter black morocco over marbled boards Residence at Tripoli in Africa must be counted among the most lively, eventful and astute reports
by Ipsley Bindery, spine gilt in 6 compartments, gilt by a woman living abroad. Richard Tully was the British consul in Tripoli, and Miss Tully’s
maroon lettering piece in one; extremities lightly letters, gathered in this volume, cover the period from July 1783 to August 1793.
rubbed and bumped, a very good copy; provenance: A ‘delicious mixture of sensational subject-matter and deadpan delivery’ (Wayward Women),
Adelaide Dorothea Forbes, Castle Forbes, October Tully’s Narrative tells of visits to the bazaar, the mosques (located in the perilous ‘sands’
1818 (1789-1858, ownership inscription on title; the beleaguered by plunderers), and the royal family, where she was ‘politely congratulating the
daughter of the soldier and politician George Bashaw on his fine harem and collection of Christian slaves’ (ibid.); of wedding and funeral
Forbes, 6th Earl of Granard (1760-1837), of Forbes customs, and cannibalism in Africa. The atrocities of civil war, the political situation between
Castle, County Longford, Ireland). £1000 Spain and Algeria, Venice and Tunis, and the devastating effects of the plague (from the
threat of its arrival via Tunis in 1785 and the constant cries of mourning that soon determined
the soundscape of the city, to the quarantine measures that kept Miss Tully and her
household near-housebound for one year) unfold across many letters. At ‘one particularly
virulent stage, the consul’s family was reduced to scavenging left-over ship’s biscuits from
empty vessels in the harbour and hoarding household wood for its own coffins’ (ibid.). The
A ‘DELICIOUS MIXTURE Turkish invasion in 1793 ended both the residence of the Bashaw’s family in Tripoli as well as
that of the Tullys, but the book remains ‘particularly valuable for its picture of domestic life in
OF SENSATIONAL SUBJECT-MATTER the harem’ (Atabey).
AND DEADPAN DELIVERY’ The fine hand-coloured aquatint plates enliven Miss Tully’s account, and, in comparison
with the first edition, this second edition contains an additional two plates: that of a Bedouin
peasant woman and her child, and that of a Cologee (guard). Further, the plate of the
Aqueduct on the City of Tripoli in the first edition has been replaced with one of the city’s
Roman Triumphal Arch and the frontispiece has been re-drawn and re-aquatinted.
Atabey 1241; Playfair, Tripoli 143; Tooley 494; cf. Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 248 (1st
ed.).
 Women Exploring the Middle East

6. EGERTON, Harriet Catherine, Countess of ELLESMERE. Journal of a Tour in the Holy Land, in May and June, 1840.
London: Harrison and Co. ‘for private circulation only; for the benefit of the Ladies’ Hibernian Female School Society’, 1841.
8vo (222 x 140mm), pp. [8 (half- First and only edition, printed ‘for private circulation only’ to This copy was previously in the
title, title, preface and notice, benefit the Ladies’ Hiberian Female School Society. Lady Egerton library of William Loxham
versos blank)], 141, [1 (blank)], [2 (1800-1866) and her husband, the politician and poet Francis Farrer, and then passed, on his
(imprint, verso blank)]; tinted Egerton (né Leveson-Gower), 1st Earl of Ellesmere (1800-1857), death, to T.H. Farrer, the son of
lithographic frontispiece and 3 visited the Holy Land during their travels on their yacht around the his younger brother Thomas
tinted lithographic plates by T. Mediterranean in the winter and spring of 1839 to 1840, and ‘her Farrer, who had died in 1867.
Allom after Francis Egerton, journal followed the course she took with her husband, starting at Thomas Henry Farrer studied at
printed by C. Hullmandel, wood- Rome, and finishing on the way home from Rome. Having landed at Eton College, Balliol College,
engraved illustrations in the text; Jaffa, Lady Egerton went to Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Jericho Oxford, and Lincoln’s Inn, and
very light offsetting onto title (as before visiting the Dead Sea, and returning to Jerusalem. She was then called to the bar in
often), light spotting on final travelled on to Beirut, taking in a range of sites on the way, before 1844. In 1849 he joined the Board
blank; original green cloth by making an excursion to Baalbec. Her way back to Italy was by way of Trade to advise on legal
Edmonds and Remnants, of Rhodes, Smyrna and Athens. Lady Egerton passed comment on matters. ‘This work led to his
London, boards blocked in blind the different religions, and on the Ottoman administration, then appointment as secretary of the
with central cartouche enclosed the target of much criticism’ (Theakstone). The lithographs which new marine department of the
by borders of rules and dots, illustrate the book are after Lord Francis Egerton’s original drawings Board of Trade in August 1850. In
spine lettered in gilt and ruled in (he later published his own account of these travels in 1843 as 1853 he became an assistant
blind, lemon-yellow endpapers, Mediterranean Sketches), and the appendix includes details of their secretary of the board, handling
uncut and partially unopened; routes and the provisions and supplies that they took. marine business, in 1865 a full
spine slightly faded, extremities joint secretary, and in 1867 the
The preface explains: ‘The profits arising from the sale of this work
very lightly rubbed and bumped, board's first sole permanent
are for the benefit of the “Ladies’ Hibernian Female School
nonetheless a very good, secretary’ ODNB). A liberal and –
Society,” which was formed in 1823, having, as its sole object, the
partially unopened copy; like Francis Egerton – a keen
temporal and eternal interests of the female population of Ireland,
provenance: William Loxham supporter of free trade, Farrer
by uniting a Scriptural education with those necessary arts of
Farrer (1788-1868, engraved was ‘the architect of the
domestic and humble life of which they were, at that time, almost
armorial bookplate on upper nineteenth-century Board of
universally ignorant [...]. The Society has 232 schools, containing
pastedown; by descent to his Trade’ and was ‘one of the pillars
13,696 scholars; a great proportion of whom are the children of
nephew:) – Thomas Henry of the mid-Victorian civil
Roman Catholics, who thankfully avail themselves of the instruction
Farrer, 1st Baron Farrer of service’ (loc. cit.).
afforded them in these Protestant schools. The number of schools
Abinger, Abinger Hall (1819- Abbey, Travel 384; Blackmer 536;
would be double, had the Committee funds commensurate with the
1899, engraved bookplate on
demands upon them; and the fact that this is the only Society Robinson, Wayward Women, pp.
upper pastedown) – ‘MEB 1981
labouring in Ireland for the exclusive benefit of the female children 112-113; Röhricht 1921;
SDR’ (pencilled inscription on
of that country, affords a powerful plea for assistance from British Theakstone, p. 90.
latter bookplate). £400
Christians, and particularly from British ladies’ ([A]4r).
 Women Exploring the Middle East

7. SMYTHE, Emily Anne, Viscountess STRANGFORD. The Eastern Shores of the Adriatic in 1863: With a Visit to Montenegro.
London: Spottiswoode and Co. for Richard Bentley, 1864.
8vo (220 x 155mm), pp. [8 (title, imprint, preface, blank, contents, blank, list of illustrations, blank)], 386, [2 (publisher’s advertisements)]; colour-
printed lithographic frontispiece and 3 colour-printed lithographic plates, all by Hanhart, and one mounted photographic plate, all retaining tissue
guards; tissue guards lightly browned and creased; original brown cloth gilt by Edmond and Remnants, London, upper board with gilt border, lower
board with blind-ruled border, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, rust-brown endpapers, uncut; extremities lightly rubbed and bumped, spine slightly
creased at head and tail, nonetheless a very good, bright copy; provenance: William John Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland, Welbeck
Abbey (1800-1879, soldier, politician, landowner, and recluse; ownership inscription on front free endpaper and armorial bookplate on upper
pastedown). £1000

THE EASTERN QUESTION: THE VISCOUNTESS STRANGFORD’S TRAVELS TO THE ADRIATIC

First edition. Emily Beaufort (bap. 1826-1887), daughter of the The Eastern Shores of the Adriatic in 1863
celebrated hydrographer Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, ‘was an describes the couple’s expeditions to Albania,
energetic and talented woman, generous with both her time and her Montenegro, Dalmatia, and Corfu, and is not
money. She was a pioneer in several branches of nursing, but chiefly simply a straightforward travel narrative, but
in relief and war nursing. Her reputation eclipsed even that of also discusses the Eastern question in some
Florence Nightingale in the eyes of some contemporaries, but her depth. Indeed, the work ‘contains very
name soon fell into relative obscurity in Britain, though not in interesting political commentary on pan-
Bulgaria, where both she and her husband were long and slavism, Greece, Bulgaria and what the
affectionately remembered. This obscurity may have been because author refers to as “Yugo-slavism”. The
she lacked Nightingale’s gift for self-publicity, or because she readily plates include views of Ioannina, Suli, Setinje
admitted her failures. This made her the more likeable character but and Almissa in Albania’ (Blackmer), and are
not the more memorable one’ (ODNB). based on Emily’s own work; the final chapter
Following her father’s death, Beaufort had first travelled with her (‘Chaos’), was provided by her husband.
sister to Egypt, Asia Minor and Syria, and her travel experiences, in The title-page of The Eastern Shores of the
her own words and illustrations, were published as Egyptian Adriatic in 1863 is known in two states, and, like
Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines in 1861. The work (intended to show the Atabey copy (which was also bound in the
young ladies ‘in what ease they may travel – even alone’, Wayward original brown cloth) the title-page in this copy
Women) fascinated the diplomatist and orientalist Percy Ellen is printed in black (in the Blackmer copy it was
Algernon Frederick William Sydney Smythe, eighth Viscount printed in red and black).
Strangford (1825-1869), who reviewed the work, and then shortly
Atabey 80; Blackmer 102; Theakstone, p. 18;
afterwards married its author. Smythe, who had acceded to the
Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 81; Weber
peerage in 1857, lived primarily in the Near East, and Emily had the
626.
opportunity to experience a different part of the world during their
travels.
 Women Exploring
Women thethe
Exploring Middle East
Middle East

A PRESENTATION SET INSCRIBED TO E.A. FREEMAN,

STRANGFORD’S CORRESPONDENT ON THE EASTERN QUESTION

8. SMYTHE, Percy Ellen Frederick William, Viscount STRANGFORD and Emily

Anne SMYTHE, Viscountess STRANGFORD, editor. A Selection from the Writings
of Viscount Strangford on Political, Geographical, and Social Subjects. London:
Spottiswoode and Co. for Richard Bentley, 1869.
2 volumes, 8vo (189 x 129mm), pp. I: vi (editor’s preface), [4 (contents, blank, note,
blank)], 349, [1 (blank)]; II: vi, 341, [1 (imprint)], [2 (publisher’s advertisements)];
mounted photographic portrait frontispiece in I with facsimile inscription below, hand
-coloured engraved folding map by Stanford after Viscountess Strangford in II; lightly
browned, very occasional light marking, I, M1 with short tear at gutter; original brown
structured cloth gilt, boards with blind-ruled frames, upper boards with central
coronet and Arabic inscription in gilt, spines lettered and decorated in gilt, black
endpapers; extremities lightly rubbed, bumped and marked, spines somewhat faded
and minimally frayed at ends, endpapers lightly spotted, nevertheless a very good set;
provenance: Edward Augustus Freeman (1823-1892, presentation inscriptions from
Viscountess Strangford ‘with the Editor’s kindest regards, June 1869’ and ‘from
Viscountess Strangford. In memoriam’ on front free endpapers – Tom S. Burney
(pencilled ownership signatures on front free endpapers) – occasional pencilled
marginalia and markings – H.H.L. Smith (bookplates on front free endpapers).
£1000
First edition. Together with his wife Emily (née Beaufort), Viscount
Strangford explored the Middle Eastern regions following their
marriage in 1862 (see Eastern Shores of the Adriatic in 1863 above), a
journey that ‘strengthen[ed] his interest in the Eastern question. He
opposed the philhellenes and thought that the future of south-eastern
Europe belonged to the Bulgarians rather than the Greeks. He was a
frequent contributor to the Pall Mall Gazette and the Saturday
Review’ (ODNB). As Viscountess Strangford explains in her preface, at
‘the close of the Cretan Insurrection in the course of last autumn [of
1868], Lord Strangford determined to collect the various articles and
notes he had written upon the war, and to reprint them together with
a chapter in the “Eastern Shores of the Adriatic,” entitled “Chaos.” It
was his intention to have woven these articles into a combined
narrative and commentary upon the events of the day, and to have
dovetailed them on to some of his earlier writings upon Eastern Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines (1861), and had contributed a chapter to
Europe’ (I, p. v). her Eastern Shores. This collection gathers the Viscount’s writings on
the Eastern Question, the Greeks and Central Asia, with some shorter
Sadly, Strangford’s sudden death in January 1869 meant that the task miscellanea – a tribute to the questions that occupied the Viscount
of completing the work fell upon the shoulders of his widow – who was throughout his lifetime.
both well suited and well prepared for the role, since the couple had
first met when the Viscount reviewed her first book, Egyptian This set was inscribed by Viscountess Strangford to E.A. Freeman,
a very industrious and prolific historian (between 1860 and 1869 he
wrote 391 reviews and 332 miscellaneous articles for the Saturday
Review alone). Freeman’s particular passion was political history and he
was deeply engaged with the Eastern Question – to the point that he
sacrificed an income of circa £500-700 per annum, when he broke with
the Saturday Review in 1878 over the Eastern question. But it was not
only because of his involvement with the Eastern Question that he was
such an appropriate recipient of this set from the Viscountess:
Freeman was a great letter writer, and the Viscount had been
among his most prominent correspondents. Emily later also edited
the Viscount’s correspondence (Original Letters and Papers of the
Late Viscount Strangford upon Philological and Kindred Subjects, 1878),
in which the Viscount’s letters to Freeman – discussing, among other
things, Middle Eastern politics and the Eastern Question – fill close to
100 pages.
 Women Exploring the Middle East

A RARE PRESENTATION SET OF ISABEL BURTON’S CELEBRATED WORK

9. BURTON, Lady Isabel. The Inner Life of Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land.
From my Private Journal. London: Caxton Printing Works for Henry S. King & Co.,
1875.
2 volumes, 8vo (220 x 137mm), pp. I: x, 376; II: [6 (half-title, advertisement on verso,
title, copyright statement on verso, contents, verso blank)], 340, [1 (blank)], [3
(publisher’s advertisements)]; erratum slip tipped onto II, p. 1; mounted
woodburytype portrait frontispieces of Isabel and Richard Burton by Barraud and
Gerrard in vols I and II respectively, both retaining tissue guards, 2 colour-printed
lithographic plates retaining tissue guards by Standidge & Co after Frederic
Leighton and one engraved folding map by W. and A.K. Johnston printed in blue and
black with routes added by hand in red; some scattered light spotting, heavier on
titles and contents ll., occasional light marking, skilfully-repaired, short marginal
tear on map; original black cloth gilt by Burn & Co., London, upper boards with gilt
star-and-crescent and patriarchal cross devices, spines lettered in gilt, coated black
endpapers, uncut; extremities lightly rubbed and bumped causing small losses at
spine-ends, traces of adhesive on rear free endpapers and of labels on spines, both
vols skilfully rebacked retaining original spines, otherwise a very good set;
provenance: Thomas Henry Sanderson, 1st Baron Sanderson (1841-1923,
autograph presentation inscription on vol. I half-title ‘To Thos H Sanderson Esq with
Mrs Burtons best regards 19th May 1875’) – Francis Frederick Fox, FSA, Brislington,
Bristol (1833-1915, engraved armorial bookplates on upper pastedowns) – William
George’s Sons Ltd, Bristol (bookseller’s ticket on upper pastedown of vol. I) – Pine
Hill Library, Divinity Hall (early inkstamp on I, p. 65). £2000
First edition. The author and traveller Isabel Burton In her preface, Isabel is careful to distinguish The Inner
(1831-1896) accompanied her husband Richard Burton Life of Syria from Unexplored Syria, stating that, ‘[t]his
to the Middle East in 1869, when he was appointed book contains little History, Geography, or Politics; no
British Consul at Damascus by his friend and associate Science, Ethnology, Botany, Geology, Zoology,
Lord Henry Stanley, the Foreign Secretary. In Mineralogy, or Antiquities. Exploration and the harder
Damascus, ‘[Richard] and Isabel enjoyed some of the travels [...] have been described by Captain Burton and
happiest moments of their lives’ (ODNB, ‘Burton, Sir myself in “Unexplored Syria;” but for all that, this book
Richard Francis’), and they remained there until 1871, contains things women will like to know. I have followed
when a diplomatic issue caused the Turkish authorities my husband everywhere, gleaning only woman’s lore,
to demand, successfully, that the British government and I hope that the daily jottings of my private journal
recall the consul; Richard left the country on 18 August will yield a sketch of the inner life of the Holy Land in
1871 and Isabel followed on 13 September 1871. Shortly general, and of Damascus in particular. I wish to convey
after the Burtons returned to England, Richard and an idea of the life which an Englishwoman may make
Charles F. Tyrwhitt Drake published Unexplored Syria: for herself in the East. [...] I have been often accused of
Visits to the Libranus, the Tulúl el Safá, the Anti-Libanus, writing as if it were intended as an address for the Royal
the Northern Libanus, and the ’Aláh (London: 1872), Geographical Society, that is, in a quasi-professional
which ‘is effectively an anthology of papers – some way. I conclude that this happened because I always
written by Richard, some by Charles Tyrwhitt Drake, wrote with and for my husband, and under his direction.
and some by Isabel – on a variety of subjects whose only This is my first independent publication, and I try the
link is Syria and the Lebanon’ (M.S. Lovell, A Rage to experiment of writing as if talking with friends. I hope
Live. A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton (London: not to err too much the other way, and, in throwing off
1999), p. 583). It was then followed some three years the usual rules of authorship, to gain by amusing and
later by Isabel’s first book – The Inner Life of Syria, interesting those who read me, what I may lose in
Palestine, and the Holy Land, which was based upon her style’ (I, pp. [vii]-viii). Isabel’s hopes for her book were
journal, although the surviving manuscripts fulfilled, and it was ‘reviewed sympathetically and sold
demonstrate that some of the text was Richard’s work, well’ (Lovell, p. 614), while Blackmer judges it a ‘very
and that he ‘also made editorial corrections, without in interesting work’ and adds that ‘[h]er account of the
any way attempting to alter Isabel’s gossipy matter-of- Harem is of especial value’.
fact style’ (op. cit. p. 607).
 This set was inscribed by Isabel to the civil servant Thomas H.
Sanderson, who was educated at Eton College and then
appointed Junior Clerk at the Foreign Office in 1859, after
passing a competitive examination. In July 1866 he became
INSCRIBED TO THE FOREIGN SECRETARY’S PRIVATE SECRETARY Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Stanley and
held the position until the Conservative administration fell in
1868, taking up the post again when Disraeli regained power in
1874 and Stanley (now the 15th Earl of Derby) returned to his
previous position, and holding it until Derby’s resignation in
1878. Sanderson grew very close to Stanley, becoming a
member of his household – indeed, he ‘may have been the son
Derby and Lady Derby never had’ (ODNB) – and it seems likely
that Isabel gave this copy to Sanderson as part of her campaign
to ensure that Richard enjoyed the recognition which she felt he
deserved, and also in appreciation of Stanley’s role in securing
the appointment to Damascus. Isabel is likely to have met
Sanderson through Stanley and would have realised his influence
in the Foreign Office and over The Foreign Secretary – and hence
his importance as an ally.
Inscribed presentation sets of the first edition of The Inner Life of
Syria are rare on the market: Anglo-American auction records
only list an inscribed second edition, to which can be added a set
inscribed to Lady Marian Alford on 6 July 1875. W.H. Wilkins’ The
Romance of Isabel Lady Burton (London: 1897), states that The
Inner Life of Syria was published in May 1875; therefore, not only
was this set inscribed in the month of publication, but it is also
the earliest inscribed presentation set that we have been able
to trace.
Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 232; Röhricht 3323; Theakstone,
p. 41; cf. Blackmer 246 (2nd edition).
 Women Exploring the Middle East

STARK’S RARE FIRST BOOK

10. STARK, Freya Madeline. Baghdad Sketches. Baghdad: The Times Press, Ltd, 1932.
8vo (217 x 142mm), pp. [8], 132; 2 mezzotint plates and 10 black-and-white plates after
drawings by E.N. Prescott; very occasional light marking, title slightly browned; original
red structured cloth, printed title labels on upper board and spine; very lightly marked,
extremities slightly rubbed and bumped, causing minimal surface loss on corners and
upper joint, nonetheless a very good copy of a fragile work; provenance: (Mary) Poldores
Thomson (née MacCunn, 1896-1983, presentation inscription from Stark on front free
endpaper, ‘Poldores with love from F.S. Baghdad. Nov[ember] [19]32’). £2750

ONE OF THE EARLIEST PRESENTATION COPIES

INSCRIBED ‘WITH LOVE’ TO HER FRIEND POLDORES MACCUNN

First edition. Freya Stark, one of the greatest female travellers and writers of the
twentieth century, has been described as ‘the perfect successor to […] Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu and Isabella Bird’ (Wayward Women): her fascination with the Middle East
during prolonged childhood illnesses inspired her to learn Arabic, and to travel to and live
in Lebanon, Syria, and later Turkey, China and Nepal. ‘After two years as a journalist in
Baghdad, during which time she managed to “disentangle the absolute wrongness of the
map” of part of Persia’, Stark became the southern-Arabia expert to the Ministry of
Information in London at the outbreak of World War II. This and her numerous later
achievements were recognised in many ways, and she not only received the Back Grant
and the Founder’s Medal from the Royal Geographical Society, but was also the first
woman to be awarded the Burton Medal by the Royal Central Asiatic Society, as well as
being granted honorary doctorates from Glasgow and Durham universities. She was
appointed CBE in 1953 and raised to DBE in 1972.
Baghdad Sketches, Stark’s first book, provides insights into her life as a journalist in
Baghdad from 1929 onwards. She lived there not like the other British expatriates,
but in Arab clothing; ‘gained acceptance after adventurous journeys to Lurestan and
the Alamut district of Mazandaran, and the War Office made maps from her
observations’ (ODNB); and she was able to send articles to The Times about the
Kurdistan uprising thanks to intelligence passed on by the diplomat Captain Vyvyan
Holt, ‘who rebuffed her affections but advanced her career’ (op. cit.). Baghdad
Sketches enjoyed a great success: typical of its reception was a contemporary review in
the Geographical Journal: ‘Miss Stark is entirely free from the guide-book manner,
and her studies of the country and people have an engaging freshness. Shrewd
observation and sympathy mingle in her pages. [...] These sketches convey,
better than far more pretentious volumes, the strange fascination of the country; its
blend of antiquity and beauty with squalor, of laisser [sic] faire with racial pride and
ambition’ (vol. 81 (1933), p. 361).

This copy also commemorates another, lesser known aspect of Stark’s life: Baghdad Sketches is Stark’s rarest book – only two copies can be located
her passion for mountaineering. While she was a history student at the in UK institutions (British Library and London Library) – and inscribed
University of London in the early 1910s she started climbing with the copies are particularly scarce in the market; Anglo-American auction
English professor William Paton Ker, whom Stark considered her records only identify three inscribed presentation copies at sale since
‘godfather’ in spirit. In 1923, on a mountaineering trip to the Pizzo Bianco, 1975, with inscriptions dated 1935, Christmas 1932, and 1932. This copy
Ker died from heart failure shortly after describing the place as ‘the most was inscribed by Stark to MacCunn in the month of publication (Stark
beautiful spot in the world’ (ODNB), and Stark would dedicate her second wrote to her mother on 1 November 1932 that ‘my book [...] comes out
book, The Valleys of the Assassins, to Ker ‘in loving memory’ (see the tomorrow’ (Beyond Euphrates (London: 1951), p. 285), and we have only
following item). Stark inscribed this copy of Baghdad Sketches to her been able to trace one other copy inscribed in November 1932 (the Rose
friend Poldores MacCunn, who was an enthusiastic climber and another Young copy).
adopted goddaughter of Ker’s, and had met Stark in Tarbet, when Stark
Stark usually inscribed books as either ‘Freya Stark’ (e.g. the Rose Young
was staying at the Tarbet Hotel with Ker in 1922. Stark later wrote that
copy) or, less frequently, ‘Freya’. Apart from this volume, the use of her
MacCunn – who trained as a medical doctor at Glasgow, and graduated in
initials in a presentation inscription appears to be unknown and the very
1928, writing a thesis on plasma proteins in acute infective fevers – had
personal phrasing ‘with love from F.S.’ together with the remarkably
described her constitution as ‘an insult to the medical profession’ (Letters
good condition of the fragile binding, make this the most desirable copy
(Salisbury: 1974), I, p. 85). The two women had both been members of the
of Stark’s first book to be offered on the market in recent decades.
ill-fated climbing expedition, and Stark and MacCunn had stayed with Ker’s
body for seven hours, while they waited for help to arrive. Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 28.
11. STARK, Freya Madeline. The Valleys of the Assassins and other Persian Travels. London:
Women Exploring the Middle East
Butler & Tanner Ltd. for John Murray, 1937.
8vo (213 x 135mm), pp. [8 (blank l., half-title, advertisement on verso, title, imprint on verso,
dedication, verso blank)], 365, [1 (blank)], [2 (blank l.)]; portrait frontispiece after Dorothy
Hawksley, 9 half-tone photographic plates after Stark, 2 double-page, one full-page illustration in
the text after H.W. Hawes, 2 folding maps (one with routes in red) and 2 full-page maps in the text
by Emery Walker Ltd, after Stark et al.; some little spotting on early ll.; contemporary Portuguese
full roan by Fersil, Oporto, spine gilt in compartments, gilt morocco lettering pieces in 2, top edges
stained red, silk marker; extremities slightly rubbed and bumped, map endpapers removed when
rebound, nonetheless a very good copy; provenance: Hugh Michael Carless, May 1942 (1925-
2011, ownership inscription on front flyleaf, with contemporary newspaper clipping on the
Assassins tipped in below, second signature on verso of frontispiece). £375

‘ELEGANT PROSE, LIVELY WIT, AND OBSERVATIONS OF PEOPLE’

‘Cheap edition’. The Valleys of the Assassins was Stark’s This copy was previously in the library of the British traveller and diplomat Hugh
second book after Baghdad Sketches (for which, see the Carless, who was born in India and educated at Sherborne School. In 1942 Carless was
previous item), and was based on her travels through Persia in given a Foreign Office bursary to study Persian (Farsi) under Professor Vladimir
the late 1920s and early 1930s. As the ODNB comments, when Minorsky at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (where
she returned to London in 1933, it was ‘to receive accolades as Stark had briefly studied Arabic in the mid-1920s), and he was then posted to Tehran
a female traveller. She was awarded the Back grant from the in 1943. In 1947 he was demobilized and read history at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and
Royal Geographical Society [...] and was the first woman to then joined the foreign service in 1950 and was posted to Kabul as Third Secretary in
receive the Burton medal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Her 1951, remaining there until 1953, when he was posted to Brazil. In 1956 he was posted
account of her journeys, The Valleys of the Assassins (1934), to Tehran as Oriental Secretary, but before taking up his post, he joined his friend Eric
was an immediate success, and known for its elegant prose, Newby for an expedition to Afghanistan, prompted by Newby’s telegram ‘Can you
lively wit, and observations of people’. Indeed, reviewing the travel Nuristan June?’ – this expedition would later be immortalised in Newby’s
book for The Observer, Vita Sackville-West considered that celebrated account A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (London: 1958), which was
Stark ‘appreciates the especial beauty and charm of Persia as dedicated to ‘Hugh Carless of Her Majesty’s Foreign Service, without whose
few Britishers I met in Persia ever were capable of doing. She determination, it must be obvious to anyone who reads it, this journey could never
has found out one of the most beautiful countries in the world, have been made’.
and has done it justice’ (20 May 1934, p. 4). The first edition Carless would later befriend Stark, and his acquisition of the volume while a
was published in May 1934, it was reprinted in June and young student of Farsi in 1942 makes this a particularly interesting association copy.
November of that year, and this ‘Cheap Edition’ (which was
presumably the fourth) followed in 1937. For the 1st ed., cf. Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 28.

FROM THE LIBRARY OF STARK’S FRIEND HUGH CARLESS

 Women Exploring the Middle East

12. COBBOLD, Lady Evelyn Zainab. Pilgrimage to Mecca. London: Butler &
Tanner for John Murray, 1934.
8vo (196 x 139mm), pp. xi, [1 (blank)], 260; half-tone portrait frontispiece, 12 half-
tone plates, and one full-page map; some scattered light spotting and foxing;
original green cloth gilt, upper board lettered in gilt with the name Zainab in
Arabic, spine lettered in gilt, top edges stained green; spine slightly darkened,
extremities lightly rubbed and bumped, otherwise a very good copy. £600

THE FIRST ENGLISHWOMAN TO MAKE THE HAJJ AS A MUSLIM

 First edition, ?later issue. The daughter of the well- Her journey is described in Pilgrimage to Mecca, which takes
known traveller Charles Adolphus Murray, Earl of the form of journal entries, opening with her departure from
Dunmore (1841-1907) and a relative of the adventuress Port Said on 22 February 1933 and concluding to her return to
and traveller Jane Digby (1807-1881), Lady Evelyn England on 21 April 1933: ‘[t]ime cannot rob me of the
Cobbold (1867-1963) developed an interest in both memories that I treasure in my heart, the gardens of Medina,
travel and Islam ‘during a childhood punctuated by the peace of its Mosques, the countless pilgrims who passed me
winters in Algeria and Egypt, where she accompanied with shining eyes of faith, the wonder and glory of the Haram of
her father on sorties into the desert. In Algeria she Mecca, the Great Pilgrimage through the desert and the hills to
learnt to speak Arabic and delighted in escaping her Arafaat, and above all the abiding sense of joy and fulfillment
governess to visit local mosques with her Algerian that possesses the soul. What have the past days held out but
friends. She later considered that, “unconsciously I was endless interest, wonder and beauty?’ (p. 253).
a little Moslem at heart”’ (ODNB). Her first book was The work is prefaced by a foreword by Sheikh Hafiz Wahba,
Wayfarers in the Libyan Desert, a journal of her travels the Saudi Arabian Minister in London, who comments that,
through Libya in 1911 with her friend Frances Gordon ‘[a]s pilgrims, all of us, in what Bunyan calls “the wilderness of
Alexander. Before World War I, Lady Evelyn travelled in this world”, this intimate and vivid description of the Hadj
the Middle East, meeting T.E. Lawrence near Petra in cannot fail to interest everyone’ (p. xi). Writing some fifty-five
1914 and again in Egypt in 1915, by which time she had years later, Robinson judges that Pilgrimage to Mecca, ‘is a
renounced Christianity for Islam and had taken the valuable record of the hadj: for once, a woman’s view from the
Muslim name Zainab. ‘Subsequent study of Islam inside out. [...] [T]he picture she gives of the experience is
persuaded her that Islam was the religion “most
unelaborate and revealing, and detailed enough to serve as a
calculated to solve the world’s many perplexing guidebook as well as a travel account’.
problems, and to bring to humanity peace and
happiness”’ (ODNB); in 1933, aged 65, Lady Evelyn Interestingly, as with a number of other copies, this copy does
became the first British woman to make the hajj not include Cobbold’s introduction on pp. xii-xix, and it has been
(assisted by introductions from Harry St John Bridger struck out from the list of contents, suggesting that the
Philby). introduction may have been omitted from later issues of the
title.
‘FOR ONCE, A WOMAN’S VIEW FROM THE INSIDE OUT’ Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 41.
 Women Exploring
Women thethe
Exploring Middle East
Middle East

13. SHERIDAN, Clare Consuelo. Arab

Interlude. London: T. and A. Constable
Ltd. at the Edinburgh University Press
for Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1936.
8vo (216 x 134mm), pp. 384; colour-
printed photographic frontispiece and
8 monochrome half-tone photographic
plates with images recto-and-verso,
title printed in red and black; original
orange cloth, upper board and spine
blocked in blind with wave line
decoration, spine lettered in green,
ochre endpapers, upper edge stained
ochre, pictorial dustwrapper with
mounted, colour-printed illustration;
extremities lightly rubbed and
bumped, slight cracking at upper
hinge, nonetheless a very good copy
with the scarce dustwrapper. £200
First edition. Clare Consuelo Sheridan, née Frewen (1885-
AN ACCOUNT OF EIGHT YEARS IN ALGERIA
1970) grew up painting with Princess Margaret of Connaught,
writing fiction encouraged by Rudyard Kipling and Henry LIVING AS AN ARAB
James, and studying literature under the guidance of her
future husband William (‘Wilfred’) Frederick Sheridan (1879- Arab Interlude is Sheridan’s account of her eight years’ life in
1915), the great-great-grandson of the playwright. Her true Algeria, on the edge of the Sahara, where (according to the
passion, however, was sculpture. Following Wilfred’s death at dustwrapper) she ‘went entirely native, living as an Arab. As a
the Battle of Loos, Clare Sheridan took a small London studio woman she had admittance to several sides of native life
to study sculpture under William Reid Dick. She exhibited never open to man, and speaking the language fluently, made
successfully with the support of the National Portrait Society, several lasting friendships with the Arabs. Thus this is the first
secured commissions from famous political figures including book to take its readers into an Arab village so that they really
former prime minister Lord Asquith and F.E. Smith (later Lord get to know the people and see the intimate side of their
Birkenhead), and modelled a head of her cousin Winston private life and customs’. She did not lose contact with
Churchill while he tried to paint her. European society, however, and her famous visitors included
Lady Louis Mountbatten, Duff Cooper, and Prince Sixte de
Sheridan’s subsequent international travels were as exciting as
Bourbon.
they were controversial. She first visited Moscow in 1920 at
the invitation of the Soviet trade delegation that had come to When Sheridan returned to Europe to sculpt a bust of Ghandi
London. ‘Civil war was raging in the Crimea and Winston in 1934, she found herself in Paris, in the middle of the fascist
Churchill, the secretary of state for war, was pressing for allied riots of 6 February 1934. This ‘introduction to civilization after
intervention. With displeasure he learned that his cousin was eight years “asleep” in the Sahara’ (dustwrapper) forms the
living in the Kremlin in Moscow doing busts of Grigory final chapter, which ominously concludes, ‘I used to wonder as
Zinoviev, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, Kamenev, Lenin, and Trotsky I looked across the desert whether my life that had been so
[…]. When she returned to England, Clare found that London eventful and colourful was meant to peter out in the sands of
society ignored her and Churchill preferred not to see her. So the desert like those waters of the flood. This last chapter
she departed for America’, then travelled to Mexico, and would seem to be the answer. The Arab interlude was a
returned to Europe in 1922 as the travelling correspondent of necessary period of calm in which to store up reserves of
the New York World (ODNB). Her exclusive reports on the Irish force. Who knows what new experiences, thrills, emotions lie
civil war and the Greek-Turkish war, and her interviews with in store… for us all? Who knows? Maybe this last chapter is
Atatürk and the newly crowned Queen Marie of Romania, had merely a prelude’ (p. 384).
much success. The following years were spent with travels to
Russia and living on the Bosphorus, writing Nuda Veritas, her
first, best-selling volume of autobiography (1927), and further BY A COUSIN OF CHURCHILL AND SCULPTOR OF LENIN
work on sculpture.
 Into Africa

14. EDWARDS, Amelia Ann Blanford. A Thousand Miles Up the Nile.

London: R. & R. Clark for Longmans, Green, & Co., 1877.
4to (258 x 190mm), pp. xxv, [1 (blank)], 732; wood-engraved frontispiece (with
guard) and 16 plates, wood-engraved title-vignette, illustrations in the text,
and tailpieces, all by G. Pearson after Edwards and Elihu Vedder (one
tailpiece), 2 folding colour-printed lithographic maps by E. Waller, and one
photolithographic plate by Whiteman, Hicks, & Whiteman; occasional light
spotting or marking, slight offsetting from maps; original pictorial red cloth
over bevelled boards by Westley’s & Co, London with their ticket on the lower
pastedown, upper board blocked in gilt and black with border of Egyptian
motifs enclosing central panel with title, lower board blocked in blind with
border of Egyptian motifs, spine decorated in gilt and black with Egyptian
motifs and lettered in gilt, grey-brown endpapers, all edges gilt; minimal light
marking, extremities a little rubbed and bumped, short split on lower joint,
skilful restoration on hinges, nonetheless a very good, clean copy in the
original cloth; provenance: Humphrey Evans, London (20th-century ownership
signature on half-title and small inkstamps on rear free endpaper). £800
First edition. Edwards (1831-1892) was already an
established travel writer when she decided to undertake
an expedition to Egypt with her friend Lucy Renshawe in
1873: ‘[i]t was a journey that changed the course of her
Edwards subsequently devoted her life to the
life. She became so fascinated with Egypt that it
preservation of Egyptian antiquities, helping to establish
dominated her thinking and her work for the next two
the Egypt Exploration Fund (later the Egyptian
decades. With other tourists whom they had met in Cairo
Exploration Society) in 1882, and continued to publish
the two women hired a dahabiyah and sailed to Wadi
and lecture on Egypt and its culture. The American
Halfa, accompanying friends met on the crossing from
branch of the EES was soon established. In 1886 Smith
Italy. While at Abu Simbel the party discovered,
College awarded her an LLD, Columbia honoured her in
excavated, and described in detail a previously unknown
the following year, and ‘[i]n 1889-90 she was invited to
small temple with a painted chamber. Amelia Edwards
lecture in the United States and in five months addressed
and Lucy Renshawe also visited Syria, crossed the
some 100,000 people at about 110 meetings in 16 states,
Lebanese ranges to Damascus and Baalbek, and travelled
despite having broken her arm early in the tour [...]. She
on to Constantinople [...]. On her return to England she
brought to her writing and lecturing on Egyptology the
read extensively about ancient Egypt and consulted such
liveliness and vigour of the novelist, the knowledge of
specialists as Dr Samuel Birch and R. S. Poole on matters
the scholar, and her own irrepressible sense of humour.
of historical and archaeological detail. She was also “led
In October 1891, while supervising antiquities arriving
step by step to the study of hieroglyphical writing” [...].
from Egypt at London docks, Amelia Edwards contracted
With this knowledge and her own experiences she wrote
a lung infection which led to her death [...]. She
her very successful A Thousand Miles up the Nile [...],
bequeathed her Egyptological library and her own
illustrated from her watercolours. Praised by reviewers for
collection of antiquities (now the Edwards Library and
its “brilliant descriptions of scenery and the exactness of
Museum) to University College, London, where she had
its information” [...] and as “a delightful, gossiping
also founded the first ever chair devoted to Egyptology.
book” [...], it is still recognized as “one of the great classics
By her choice, its first occupant was Flinders
of the history of the Nile” [...]. She regarded it as the most
Petrie’ (ODNB).
important of her books and the one for which she hoped
to be remembered’ (ODNB). Robinson states that A Ibrahim-Hilmy, pp. 213-214; Kalfatovic 0678a; Robinson,
Thousand Miles up the Nile is ‘the first general Wayward Women, pp. 13-14; Theakstone, pp. 87-88 (‘a
archaeological survey of Egypt’s ruins’ and considers it classic in the genre’).
‘one of the most inspiring travel books in the language’.
The first edition of 1877 was followed by a second edition
in 1888, which was re-issued through the nineteenth
century.
 Into Africa
15. MARTIN, Annie. Home Life on an Ostrich Farm. London: George Philip & Son, 1890.
8vo (195 x 130 mm), pp. [6 (half-title, verso blank, title, verso blank, dedication, verso
blank)], 288; half-tone frontispiece, retaining tissue guard, 7 plates with illustrations after
the author et al.; some light spotting, some quires clumsily opened, causing marginal
tearing; original brown cloth, boards with onlaid printed decorative paper panels, spine
lettered and ruled in gilt, cream endpapers; extremities lightly rubbed and bumped, spine
slightly leant, otherwise a very good copy in the original cloth; provenance: W.H. Barrett,
Chichester (bookseller’s ticket on upper pastedown) – ‘From Charlwood. 1897’ (inscription
on upper pastedown, scored through by a later hand) – M.A.P. Smith (pencilled ownership OSTRICH FARMING IN SOUTH AFRICA
signature on title with reading note at end of text [?dated 1912]) – Arthur Probsthain,
London (bookseller’s ticket on upper pastedown) – Ida and Frederick William Hosken
(engraved bookplate by Leo Wyatt dated 1979 on upper pastedown; sale, Stephan Welz &
Co. and Sotheby’s, 12 September 2001, lot 1186). £250

First edition. Mendelssohn describes Home Life on an

Ostrich Farm as an ‘account of life in the Karoo, in the
“Zwart Ruggens” country near Port Elizabeth. The writer
accompanied her husband to South Africa in 1881, and
they resided there for several years engaged in ostrich
farming. Many details are given respecting the climate
and flora of this part of the continent, and there is a good
deal of information on the subject of ostrich
breeding’ (Mendelssohn).
The book was evidently successful; a second UK edition
appeared in 1891 and a third in 1892, while an American
edition was issued in New York in 1891.
Hosken, p. 136; Mendelssohn I, p. 987; Robinson,
Wayward Women, pp. 303-304; SAB III, p. 268;
Theakstone, p. 175; Theal, p. 191.
 Into Africa

16. VICTORIA, Crown Princess of Sweden. Vom Nil. Tagebuchblätter während des Aufenthalts in Egypten im Winter
1890/91... Mit Lichtdruckbildern nach eigenen photographischen Aufnahmen und einer Karte. Als Manuscript
gedruckt. Karlsruhe: G. Braun’sche Hofbuchdruckerei, 1892.
 First edition, printed for private
circulation. Vom Nil records a
journey along the Nile made
between October 1890 and April
4to (300 x 225mm), pp. [4], 163, [1 (errata)]; 1891 by Princess Victoria of Baden
text printed within red borders, initials printed (1862-1930), later Queen Victoria of
in red; heliogravure frontispiece and 34 Sweden (queen consort 1907-1930).
heliogravure plates, printed by J. Schober, and
one folding, colour-printed lithographic map; Written in the form of a diary, the
162 illustrations in the text; original richly Princess’s account of her travels is
decorated and gilt light brown pictorial cloth richly illustrated with her own
by Hasert, Stuttgart, all edges red, patterned accomplished photographs depicting
endpapers; extremities minimally rubbed and the major monuments as well as
bumped, a few tiny marks, covers a little landscape views and studies of the
bowed, nonetheless an excellent, bright copy; different ethnic groups encountered.
provenance: Otto Hack Roland Printzköld (1846- The work was published privately
1930, Lord Chamberlain to the King of and is rare – OCLC records only one
Sweden, armorial bookplate on upper copy outside Germany (National
pastedown). £1800 Library of Sweden) – and this copy
was presumably a gift to Otto
Printzköld, the Lord Chamberlain to
the King of Sweden.
Kainbacher 430.
 Into Africa

INSCRIBED TO LADY LYALL

17. KINGSLEY, Mary Henrietta. Travels in West Africa. Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons...
Fifth Thousand. London: Richard Clay and Sons Limited for Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1897.
2 volumes, 8vo (224 x 143mm), pp. I: [i]-xvi, [1]-352; II: [353]-743, [1 (imprint)], 1-8 (publisher’s
catalogue); half-tone frontispiece in vol. I, retaining tissue guard, 15 half-tone plates, 2 lithographic
plates of fish by and after J. Green, printed by Mintern Bros, half-tone illustrations in the text; some
variable spotting, l. 2S4 with creasing and short tears on margin, some quires clumsily opened
causing short marginal tears; original red cloth, boards with blind-ruled borders, spine lettered and
ruled in gilt, black endpapers, uncut; extremities slightly rubbed and bumped, some minor fading, a
few light marks, otherwise a very good set; provenance: Lady Cornelia Arnoldina Lyall
(presentation inscriptions ‘Lady Lyall with love & thanks from Mary H. Kingsley’ on title and vol. II
front free endpaper; manuscript amendment by Kingsley on p. 307, correcting ‘M’pongwe’ to
‘M’pangwe’). £1250

‘ARGUABLY THE BEST-KNOWN OF ALL BOOKS BY VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN WOMEN TRAVELLERS’

First edition, fifth thousand. The traveller and writer Mary Kingsley (1862-1900) was the daughter of the physician and traveller
George Henry Kingsley, and niece of the novelists Charles Kingsley and Henry Kingsley. Although she had no formal schooling, she read
widely in her father’s library and, after moving to Cambridge (where her brother was a student at Christ’s College), she enjoyed the
stimulus of the city’s academic community. Between 1888 and 1892, Kingsley cared for her invalid mother and, later, her father; his
death in February 1892 and his wife’s in April 1892, released Kingsley from her filial duties and she moved to London with her brother. In
August 1893 she left for Africa on her own, and she ‘first touched African soil in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on 17 August, then headed
slowly south to Luanda. After making her way north again, in October she visited Richard Dennett’s trading station at Cabinda’ (ODNB),
and returned to Liverpool in December 1893.
‘The collections which Mary Kingsley brought home were considered valuable by the scientific The first edition was presumably of a thousand
community, and the voyage had been a foretaste of what she might do with more definite aims copies, since copies are known marked ‘second
and better preparation. Determined to undertake a more rigorous research project in west thousand’ on the title, and the book’s popularity saw
Africa, she contacted Dr Albert Günther, keeper of zoology at the British Museum, who gave her this fifth thousand appear shortly afterwards.
a large range of collectors’ materials. By the end of the year she had secured a commission from Unusually, this copy is bound as two volumes, rather
the publisher George Macmillan for a book on west Africa. With increased expertise, resources, than one, with continuous pagination and no title to
and confidence, she sailed from Liverpool on 23 December 1894 in the company of Lady Ethel the second volume; since it is a presentation copy
Macdonald, the wife of the commissioner-general of the Oil Rivers Protectorate, whom she had from the author, it seems possible that it was a trial
met in Calabar in 1893. Mary Kingsley stayed four months with the Macdonalds at the Calabar copy, which was sent to the author, and then given
residency, nursing the European residents through a smallpox outbreak and, despite the Brass by her to Lady Lyall, the wife of her friend and
uprising, making brief trips inland, and accompanied the Macdonalds on an official visit to the admired associate Sir Alfred Lyall. In July 1897 Lyall
Spanish governor on Fernando Po. [...] At the beginning of May, Mary Kingsley began her had published ‘Origins and Interpretations of
journey south to Gabon, before ascending the Ogooué River and passing through the dangerous Primitive Religions’ (Edinburgh Review, pp. 213-225),
rapids above N’Djolé. A short though daring journey through a part of the Fang country which which ‘was probably the most erudite review of
had never been reached by a European before, leading her own two-canoe expedition from Travels in West Africa’ in July 1897 (K. Frank, A
Lambarene on the Ogooué River to Agonjo on the upper waters of the Ramboë River, Voyager Out: The Life of Mary Kingsley (London:
established her reputation as an explorer. In August she visited Corisco Island. The last feat of 1987), p. 234). Kingsley ‘was fond of Lady Lyall’ (O.
this second African journey was the ascent of Mount Cameroun (13,760 ft) by a route previously Campbell, Mary Kingsley (London: 1957), p. 168) and
unattempted by a European’ (op. cit.). wrote to her husband in May 1898 that, ‘it does me
good to come [...] into Lady Lyall’s sunshine’ (quoted
Kingsley returned to England on 30 November 1895 with significant natural history collections,
in C. Howard, Mary Kingsley (London: 1957), p. 209).
which included eighteen species of reptiles and sixty-five species of fish, including three
previously unknown to science and subsequently named for her. She wrote and lectured Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War in
about her travels, and also began work on Travels in West Africa, which was published in January 1899, Kingsley sailed to South Africa on 11 March
1897, and ‘the publicity surrounding publication put her in contact with yet more influential 1900, and ‘[o]n her arrival at Cape Town she offered
people, including [...] the Indian expert Sir Alfred Lyall [whom she met at a dinner party given by her services as a nurse and was posted to the Simon’s
H.M. Stanley], and the anthropologist James Frazer’ (op. cit.). As Robinson comments, Travels Town Palace Hospital to tend to Boer prisoners of
in West Africa and its successor West African Studies (1899) ‘were immediate best sellers, both for war. Within two months the typhoid that was killing
their serious scientific content and their exuberant raciness’ and they have maintained their her patients struck her, and on 3 June 1900 she died.
reputation to the present day; for example, Theakstone judges that Travels in West Africa is According to her own wishes, she was buried at sea.
‘arguably the best-known of all books by Victorian and Edwardian women travellers’, while The coffin was conveyed from Simon's Town harbour
Birkett states that, ‘[h]er courage, skill, and adaptability in little-known and difficult terrain were on a torpedo boat with full military honours’ (ODNB).
remarkable; her insight into African culture was penetrating, especially in one whose direct Hess and Coger 5571; Joucla, Bibliographie de
contact with the continent stretched over only two years; the skill with which she advanced her l’Afrique occidentale française 6121; Neate K26
ideas in Britain was formidable; her literary talent [...] was conspicuous; and the scope of her Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 136; Theakstone, p.
intellect was wide’ (ODNB). 153.
 Into Africa

18. [GILCHRIST, Jeanie and John RITCHIE, editor.] Jeanie Gilchrist:

Pioneer Missionary to the Women of Central Africa. Kilmarnock: John
Ritchie, [circa 1904].
8vo (181 x 118mm), pp. 80; half-tone photographic portrait
frontispiece and 17 half-tone photographic illustrations in the text;
very occasional very light marking; publisher’s original maroon
structured cloth over bevelled boards, upper board blocked in blind
and lettered in gilt, mounted photographic illustration within gilt
ruled frame, spine lettered in gilt and decorated in blind, all edges
gilt, black endpapers; extremities lightly rubbed and bumped,
nonetheless a very good copy; provenance: Edwin S. Munger (1922-
2010, Munger Africana Library blind stamp on title). £300

A RARE MEMOIR OF A SCOTTISH MISSIONARY IN ANGOLA AND ZAMBIA

First edition. Jeanie Gilchrist, born in the late 1850s, was a The introduction suggests that this account was prepared shortly
Scottish missionary who started working for her calling in after Gilchrist’s death, and the advertisement opposite the
hospitals and around the harbour of Portsmouth in 1885. It was preface lists biographies of Donald Ross (1824-1903), and Charles
here that she became part of the mission movement that had Morton (1849-1900), so it seems likely that this volume was
expanded since 1880, to China, India, and other far lands. She issued in circa 1904. The text was later issued by Ritchie with J.J.
was recruited for the African mission by Fred Stanley Arnot Ellis’ biography of Mary Slessor, under the title Two Missionary
(who, in turn, as a boy had heard Livingstone speak in Scotland Heroines in Africa. Mary Slessor and Jeanie Gilchrist in circa 1927
about the country he had so thoroughly explored), and joined and the sheets forming the biography of Gilchrist also appear to
his party going to Central Africa in 1889. Gilchrist worked in have been issued as a discrete work of 79 pp. with eight plates in
schools and missionary stations in Angola and Zambia, in 1901 circa 1927-1928. Copies of this first edition appear to be very
also sailed to America, and her final trip was to South Africa in scarce in institutional collections, and the only copy listed in
1903, but while journeying on to Zambia from there, she was COPAC with 80 pages (as opposed to the 79 of the later issue) is
struck down by a fever and passed away. held by the John Rylands Library.
John Ritchie (1853-1930), ‘Publisher of Christian Literature’,
informs the reader in his preface (signed ‘J.R.’) that the memoir FROM THE MUNGER AFRICANA LIBRARY
was put together in memoriam of Miss Gilchrist, based on her
diaries and letters to family, friends and fellow-missionaries; This copy was previously in the collection of the distinguished
and asserts that, while ‘“Women’s work” is, as it ever has been, geographer Edwin S. Munger, one of the leading experts on
a subject on which earnest Christians have divergent opinions’, Africa in the United States, who was Professor of Geography at
Jeanie Gilchrist’s work, character and spirit were admired by Caltech, founder of the African Studies Association and the Cape
all. The photographs reproduced in this volume show her of Good Hope Foundation, and President of the L.S.B. Leakey
among the missionaries and the subjects of her attention, in Foundation. The Munger Africana Library was his collection of
schools and villages, as well as her being carried in a Tipoia (a circa 60,000 volumes on sub-Saharan Africa and the largest
hammock-like litter) and various views of the African private library on the subject in the United States; it was also a
landscape and people. resource which informed his numerous publications on Africa
and also the Munger Africana Library Notes, which he edited
between 1969 and 1982.
19. SWAYNE, Frances. A Woman’s Pleasure Trip in Somaliland: Illustrated by Sixty-One Into Africa
Photographs Taken by the Author and by a Sketch Map of the District Round Berbera. Bristol: John
Wright & Co. and London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1907.
8vo (182 x 137mm), pp. xii, 172; one lithographic map and 61 full-page half-tone photographic
illustrations in the text; original green publisher’s cloth gilt, upper board lettered and blocked in gilt
with map illustration, lower board blocked in blind with printer’s device, spine lettered in gilt, black
endpapers; extremities lightly rubbed and bumped, light crease along lower board, nonetheless a very
good copy; provenance: ‘With the Author’s kind regards’ (presentation inscription on title). £700

A PRESENTATION COPY OF THIS RARE ACCOUNT OF TRAVELS IN SOMALILAND

First edition. Frances Swayne travelled to Swayne’s journey – which is traced in the map and
Somaliland in 1905-1906, as the guest of her shows her route from Berbera to the Upper
cousin, Lieutenant-Colonel Harald George Sheikh, and then east and west through the
Carlos Swayne (the author of Seventeen Trips country – occurred during a peaceful period in the
through Somaliland, 1895), and accompanied region that would only last until 1908. She later
by his brother Brigadier-General Eric J.E. travelled to Guatemala, where she was the first to
Swayne. Both brothers had surveyed and photograph ancient ‘Maya Indian Ruins at
mapped the British territory in the country for Quirigus’ which had been recently rediscovered
the Government, and, in fights against the (cf. The Geographical Journal 38 (1911), p. 344).
Dervish army, defeated the so-called ‘Mad A contemporary review commented, ‘[t]hat a
Mullah’, Mohammed Abdullah Hassan.
white woman, even with the special advantages
Although the preface states that her intention that Miss Swayne possessed, may now really
was to present the newly-freed Somaliland as enjoy a trip into the interior of Somaliland shows
a holiday resort suitable for lady travellers, that things are moving in that once inhospitable
Swayne’s expedition and book range much region’ (Bulletin of the American Geographical
more widely, and include a detailed Society 40 (1908), p. 512). Another, astutely,
description of the land and its peoples; an observed that ‘the book should especially attract
account of activities ranging from hunting to those ladies who have experience of, or
mountain climbing; and a carefully selected, inclination for, camping’ (The Geographical
yet extensive and early photographic record ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR’S
Journal 31 (1908), p. 560).
of the country.
Bibliographia Aethiopica II, 1809; Theakstone, p. OWN PHOTOGRAPHS
261.
 Poles, Peaks & Skies

20. HAHN-HAHN, Ida Marie Luise Gustave, Countess. Travels in Sweden: Sketches of a Journey to the North.
Translated from the German by J.B.S. London: H.G. Clarke and Co., 1845.
8vo (130 x 90mm), pp. [i]-viii, [9]-179, [1 (blank)], 4 (publisher’s advertisements); very occasional very light
spotting; contemporary [?original] full chocolate-brown, hard-grained morocco gilt, boards with blind-ruled
borders enclosing gilt-ruled panels, central panels of foliate tools on a gilt field within foliate and floral tools,
spine gilt in 5 compartments, lettered directly in gilt in 2, others elaborately decorated in gilt, all edges gilt,
lemon-yellow endpapers; extremities very lightly rubbed and bumped and with very light skilful restoration, a
very good copy in a handsome contemporary binding; provenance: W. West, Maidstone (bookseller’s ticket on
upper pastedown) – William George Wood, No 5 Market Street, Maidstone, Kent (contemporary ownership
inscription in ink on front free endpaper). £200
A PATH OF HER OWN: COUNTESS IDA VON HAHN-HAHN IN SWEDEN

First English edition. The life of Ida von Hahn-Hahn (1805-1880) Travels in Sweden, originally published under the title Ein Reiseversuch im
began with a series of unfortunate circumstances: her formerly Norden in 1843, is a series of letters the author composed on her travels in
wealthy parents were divorced due to her father’s infatuation with the 1842, which are, like the volume itself, ‘dedicated to my friends’ (p. v).
theatre; and her own marriage aged 21 to a cousin, Count Friedrich Von Hahn-Hahn’s lively account of a country in which she missed the
von Hahn, resulted in the birth of a mentally disabled daughter and sunshine include a recollection of a Tuesday morning, when she
divorce after just three years. Thereafter, she is said to have been ‘received a present from the King, of books and maps of Sweden,
restless and determined to control her own life, often against social which, he said, he thought might be useful and interesting to me’ (July
conventions: ‘Feig war ich nie. [...] Ich bedurfte mein eigenes Gesetz, 5th, p. 125). This English translation clearly found a favourable
und ich machte es mir’ (‘I was never a coward […]. I needed personal readership: The Eclectic Review of 1846 (vol. 20, p. 472) commented
rules to live by, and I created them for myself’, Neue Deutsche that the countess was ‘independent of all the writers of the day, [and]
Biographie). For the following twenty years she travelled, with Baron has struck out a path for herself which is entirely her own’.
von Bystram as a companion, to Switzerland, Italy, Spain, France, This first English edition is rare, and COPAC only records a copy at
England, Scotland and Ireland, Scandinavia and the Orient; these
the British Library and one held by the National Trust.
travels provided the material for her successful travel books, and also
inspired some of her poetry and novels. Morgan, German Literature in English Translation 3625; Theakstone, p.
119.

NOVELIST AND TRAVEL WRITER

 Poles, Peaks & Skies

QUEEN VICTORIA’S HIGHLAND JOURNALS IN A PRESENTATION BINDING

21. VICTORIA, Queen of Great Britain. Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, from
1848 to 1861. To which are Prefixed and Added Extracts from the Same Journal Giving an Accounts
Earlier Visits to Scotland, and Tours to England and Ireland, and Yachting Excursions. Edited by Arthur
Helps. Second Edition. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1868.
8vo (200 x 137mm), pp. xv, [1 (blank)], [2 (contents)], [2 (section-title, verso blank)], 315, [1 (imprint)];
engraved frontispiece and engraved plate, both retaining tissue guards, wood-engraved illustrations in
the text, after the author; some scattered spotting and foxing; original green hard-grained morocco gilt
presentation binding by Burn & Co., London, boards with gilt-ruled borders and central design of
antlers, reproducing the design of the trade binding, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, board-edges roll-
tooled in gilt, gilt-ruled turn-ins, mid-brown endpapers, all edges gilt, blue silk marker; extremities very
lightly rubbed and bumped, otherwise a very good copy; provenance: Earl Cairns (autograph
presentation inscription from Victoria on front flyleaf, ‘To Lord Cairns, Lord Chancellor from
Victoria R Balmoral Oct[ober]: 21. 1868’). Second edition.

[With, laid down onto upper pastedown:]

VICTORIA, Queen of Great Britain. Autograph letter to Earl Cairns, Balmoral, 21 October
1868. 1 page, 8vo, light-blue mourning paper with black border and printed address; a few light
spots, laid down.
Provenance: Hugh McCalmont Cairns, 1st Earl Cairns (1819-1885, presentation inscription and
covering letter; by descent to:) – Rear-Admiral David Charles Cairns, 5th Earl Cairns (1909-
1989; sale, Sotheby’s London, 2 December 1947, lot 610 (part), to:) – Farlow (buyer of record) –
sale, Christie’s South Kensington, 6 June 2001, lot 445. £1200
In 1842, Victoria and Albert made their first visit to Scotland, and Victoria recorded in her journal that ‘Albert says [that Dalkeith is] very
German-looking’ (Leaves, p. 13); ‘[t]here could be no higher praise, and Victoria’s love affair with Scotland, which long survived her
husband, began’ (ODNB). Following further visits to Scotland in 1844 and 1847, Victoria and Albert bought Balmoral in 1848, and rebuilt it
between 1853 and 1855: ‘Balmoral provided privacy in abundance and, for Victoria, a kind of freedom unavailable elsewhere [...]. Victoria
and Albert embraced Scottishness wholeheartedly. Balmoral was bedecked in tartan, the children were dressed in kilts, and the whole
family took to highland pursuits. They made expeditions (some in transparent incognito) to local beauty spots, climbed and rode in the
mountains, attended the local highland games, and rowed on the loch. Albert studied Gaelic, hunted, shot, and fished; Victoria followed,
often taking her sketchbooks with her’ (ODNB).

INSCRIBED TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR AND WITH A LETTER FROM VICTORIA

The first section of Leaves This copy is in the uncommon gilt morocco presentation binding,
describes the royal couple’s and was inscribed to the Lord Chancellor, the distinguished
early visits to Scotland, and lawyer and politician Cairns, who was appointed by Disraeli when
the main, central section he replaced Derby as premier in February 1868; however,
describes their life in the Disraeli’s leadership (and thus Cairns’ lord chancellorship) ended
Highlands between the less than a year later, when Gladstone won the general election
purchase of Balmoral and and formed his first administration. Cairns was then reappointed
Albert’s death in 1861. The Lord Chancellor in 1874 when Disraeli returned to power and held
final section, ‘Tours in England the position until 1880. Victoria’s covering letter, which is laid
and Ireland, and Yachting down into the volume, states that, ‘[t]he Queen hopes the Lord
Excursions’ describes two Chancellor will accept these 2 books in recollection of his visit to
yachting trips in 1846, their Balmoral’, referring to this and a second volume – C. Grey’s Early
first visit to Ireland in 1849, and Years of the Prince Consort (London: 1867), inscribed to Cairns by
a visit to the Lakes of Killarney Victoria – which were both housed in a ‘watered-silk lined
in 1861. Written in the morocco solandar case, with the Cypher of the Earl Cairns on
aftermath of Albert’s death in upper side’, when the 5th Earl Cairns sold them at Sotheby’s in
1861, which caused the most 1947. When this volume was sold at Christie’s South Kensington in
extreme grief, Leaves is 2001, it had become separated from Grey’s book and the case,
dedicated: ‘To the dear which had presumably been either lost or damaged in the
memory of him who made the intervening fifty-four years. Interestingly, the Royal Collections
life of the writer bright and hold a photographic portrait of Cairns of circa 1868, which was
happy, these simple records acquired by Victoria (RCIN 2907090).
are lovingly and gratefully
inscribed’.
 Poles, Peaks & Skies

22. VICTORIA, Queen of Great Britain. More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands,
from 1862 to 1882. London: Spottiswoode and Co. for Smith, Elder and Co., 1884.
8vo (210 x 140mm), pp. x, [2 (illustrations, verso blank)], [2 (epigraphs, verso blank)], 404; engraved
portrait frontispiece, and 12 engraved and woodcut plates, all retaining tissue guards; text ll. lightly
browned, a few light spots and marks; original green cloth gilt over bevelled boards by Burn & Co.,
London, upper board lettered in gilt and with design blocked in gilt, lower board with central design
blocked in gilt, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, patterned endpapers; extremities lightly rubbed and
bumped, small mark on upper board, splitting on upper hinge, otherwise a very good copy;
provenance: Bouverie Francis Primrose (1813-1898, autograph presentation inscription from Victoria
on front flyleaf, ‘To the Hon: B.F. Primrose C.B. from Victoria RI Feb[ruary]: 21. 1884’). £500

First edition. Following the success of Victoria’s Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the
Highlands, from 1848 to 1861 (London: 1867; see the previous item), which ‘was received with a
warmth of sympathy and interest which was very gratifying to [the author’s] heart’ (p. [v]),
Victoria prepared a second volume, which records her life in the Highlands after Albert’s death,
and, ‘while describing a very altered life, [...] shows how [her] sad and suffering heart was soothed
and cheered by the excursions and incidents it recounts, as well as by the simple mountaineers,
from whom [she] learnt many a lesson of resignation and faith, in the pure air and quiet of the
beautiful Highlands’ (pp. [v]-vi). As Sidney Lee wrote, More Leaves also ‘like its forerunner,
enjoyed wide popularity’ (S. Lee, G. Smith, and L. Stephen, George Smith. A Memoir (London:
1902), p. 46).

INSCRIBED TO THE HON. BOUVERIE FRANCIS PRIMROSE CB, DL

This copy was inscribed by Victoria to the Honourable Bouverie Francis Primrose CB, DL, the son
of the politician Archibald John Primrose, 4th Earl of Rosebery, and thus the uncle of Archibald
Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, who was Victoria’s Prime Minister between 1894 and 1895.
Bouverie Francis Primrose held a number of offices of state in Scotland, including those of
Receiver-General of the Post Office in Scotland and Secretary to Boards of Manufactures and QUEEN VICTORIA’S SECOND VOLUME
Fishery Board in Scotland. FROM HER HIGHLAND JOURNALS
 Poles, Peaks & Skies

WRITTEN BY THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE LADIES’ ALPINE CLUB

23. [LE BLOND, Elizabeth Alice Frances.] My Home in the Alps. By Mrs Main.
London: Ballantyne Press for Sampson Low, Marston, and Company Limited,
1892.
8vo (190 x 130 mm), pp. vi, [2 (contents, verso blank)], 131, [1 (blank)]; light
offsetting on half-title; original grey cloth, upper board with border ruled in
black, spine lettered and ruled in black, top edges stained grey; boards slightly
bowed, spine slightly faded and leant, light offsetting on endpapers;
provenance: The Times Book Club, London (bookseller’s ticket on lower
pastedown). £150

‘THE BEST-KNOWN WOMAN MOUNTAIN CLIMBER OF HER TIME’

First edition. Elizabeth Le Blond (1860-1934), married the traveller and author Frederick Burnaby in 1879, and first
travelled to Switzerland in 1881, for the benefit of her health. She began to climb during this visit, and, when she
returned the following year, she climbed Mont Blanc twice. This began a series of climbs which scandalised her
family and the more conventional members of London society, and established her as ‘the best-known woman
mountain climber of her time’ (ODNB). Following Burnaby’s death in 1885, she married Dr J.F. Main and settled in
St Moritz, where she learned to skate – she was the first woman to pass the ‘Men’s Skating Test’ – and toboggan,
which led her to play a part in the planning and construction of the Cresta Run. Dr Main died in 1892 and in 1900
she married Aubrey Le Blond, the last of her three husbands, who would outlive her by some seventeen years.
As her reputation grew, Elizabeth published a number of books under her married names, including the present work, which is described by Neate as
‘[m]iscellaneous pieces about guides and alpine life; much of the material first appeared in the St. Moritz Post’. The author explains her purpose in her
preface thus: ‘[t]he idea of publishing these trifling papers came to me through the necessity of replying to many questions on the subjects to which I
refer; for, living as I do in Switzerland, I naturally am supposed to be more familiar with the peculiarities of the country and people than is the ordinary
tourist. It thus seems to me that a small book, dealing with some of the various objects of interest usually met with during a summer’s tour in
Switzerland, might find a corner in a traveller’s portmanteau’ (p. [v]).
A celebrated proponent of female mountaineers, Elizabeth Le Blond helped to found the Ladies’ Alpine Club in 1907 and was appointed its first
president – ‘one of the nicest things that has ever happened to me’ (quoted in Neate).
ACLC, p. 187; NLS m532; Neate L25; Perret 2587; Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 20; Theakstone, p. 39.
 Poles, Peaks & Skies
24. EDWARDS, Amelia Ann Blanford. Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys.
A Midsummer Ramble in the Dolomites. London, Manchester and New York:
Bradbury, Agnew, & Co. for George Routledge and Sons, Limited, 1893.
8vo (222 x 158mm), pp. [i]-xxiv, [25]-389, [1 (blank)]; wood-engraved frontispiece
(retaining tissue guard) and 7 plates, wood-engraved title-vignette and illustrations in
the text, one full-page, and one folding colour-printed lithographic map by F.S. Waller; AMELIA EDWARDS’ FIRST TRAVEL BOOK
light offsetting on half-title, a few light spots and marks, heavier in the final quire;
original blue cloth, upper board blocked in black with ornamental borders and title,
spine lettered and decorated in gilt, lemon-yellow endpapers; extremities lightly
rubbed and bumped, small scratch on upper board, nonetheless a very good, bright
copy. £250

Second, revised edition, later issue. Although she had established a reputation as a best-selling
author of novels and children’s books in the 1850s and 1860s, Untrodden Peaks and
Unfrequented Valleys was the first travel book written by Edwards (1831-1892). It was also one of
the first English books devoted to the Dolomites, as she explains in her preface to the first
edition: ‘[t]ill the publication of Ball’s Guide to the Eastern Alps in 1868, and the appearance of
Messrs Gilbert and Churchill’s joint volume in 1864, – the Dolomite district was scarcely known
even by name to any but scientific travellers. [...] Even now, the general public is so slightly
informed upon the subject that it is by no means uncommon to find educated persons who have
never heard of the Dolomites at all, or who take them for a religious sect, like the Mormons or
the Druses’ (pp. [ix]-x). Since the area would have been unfamiliar to her readers, the author
defines it thus: ‘[t]he Dolomite district is most easily approached from either Venice, Botzen, or
Brunecken. All that is grandest, all that is most attractive to the artist, the geologist, and the
Alpine climber, lies midway between these three points, and covers an area of about thirty-five
miles by fifty. The scenes which the present writer has attempted to describe, all lie within that
narrow radius’ (p. xiii).
Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys was first published in 1873, and the second edition, ONE OF THE EARLIEST ENGLISH BOOKS
which was revised and includes a new preface, first appeared in 1889 and was reprinted a
number of times in the following decade. ON THE DOLOMITES
Neate E09; Perret 1483; for the London: 1873 ed., cf. NLS, Mountaineering u047; Robinson,
Wayward Women, p. 13; Theakstone, pp. 87-88 (‘a tale which consistently holds the reader’s
attention’).
 Poles, Peaks & Skies

25. MARSDEN, Kate. On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers.

London: A.M. Robinson and Son for The Record Press, Limited, [1893].
8vo (222 x 144mm), pp. xv, [1 (illustrations)], 243, [1 (imprint)], [24
(commercial advertisements, one dated 1893)]; 2 double-page facsimiles of
letters inserted before frontispiece, half-tone portrait frontispiece of Queen
Victoria, retaining tissue guard, one map, 22 half-tone plates, and 2 facsimiles
of manuscripts, publisher's device on verso of title; occasional light spotting;
original blue cloth over bevelled boards, upper board with gilt vignette of the
author on horseback with two guides and lettered in gilt, spine lettered in gilt,
top edges trimmed, others uncut; spine very slightly darkened, extremities
lightly rubbed, a few light marks, slight bubbling of cloth, nonetheless a very
good, clean copy in the original cloth; provenance: E. Wicksted, 1893
(presentation inscription on upper pastedown). £400

Second edition (stamped thus on upper board). Kate Marsden (1859-1931)

trained as a nurse at the Tottenham Hospital, Snell’s Park, Edmonton in 1876
or 1877, before joining a party of nurses travelling to Bulgaria to minister to
Russian casualties of the Russo-Turkish War; it was there that she first
encountered leprosy. On her return to Britain, Marsden became a nurse at the
Westminster Hospital, and then sister in charge of the Woolton Convalescent
Home in Liverpool. In 1882 she retired due to ill health, but then travelled to
New Zealand with her mother, to nurse her sister, who was terminally ill, and
then work as the Lady Superintendent of Wellington Hospital.
A FAMOUS ACCOUNT BY ONE OF THE FIRST FEMALE FELLOWS OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY...
‘Kate decided to dedicate her life to the care of sufferers from leprosy. When she returned to
Britain in 1889 she was presented at court to Queen Victoria and obtained an introduction from
the princess of Wales to her sister, the empress of Russia. She set off for Russia, using the
presentation of a Red Cross medal for her work in Bulgaria as the occasion to investigate the
incidence of leprosy throughout Russia and the Near and Middle East. Finding that the lot of the
Siberian leprosy sufferers was particularly bad, on 1 February 1891 she set out for Siberia with a
Russian-speaking friend, Ada Field. Travelling by sledge in bitterly cold weather and great
discomfort they reached Omsk, where Field gave up and Kate pressed on alone to Irkutsk, via
Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk, visiting prisons as she went. She reached Yakutsk by barge and from
there, in June, left on horseback for Vilyuysk, a zigzagging ride of 2000 miles. Pestered by
mosquitoes and summer storms, she rode through forests and swamps and over land burning
below the surface so that there was “always danger of a horse breaking the crust and sinking
into the fire” [...]. On this most arduous section of her journey she found the plight of the
leprosy sufferers truly piteous. She gave what immediate relief she could and interested civil
and church authorities in her mission. After returning exhausted to Moscow, she continued to
canvas for support, raising through a London committee some £2400 to build and equip a
leprosy hospital which was opened in Vilyuysk in 1897. On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast
Siberian Lepers (1893) described her remarkable journey. In 1892 Kate Marsden was elected one of
the first female fellows of the Royal Geographical Society’ (ODNB). Dedicated to Queen
Victoria and illustrated with a portrait of the Queen and a facsimile of a letter from her, and with
a preface that quoted a letter from Florence Nightingale, On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast
Siberian Lepers enjoyed great popular success and achieved a twelfth edition in 1895.
However, on 16 August 1894 The Times published a letter from Rev. Alexander Francis (the
pastor of the St Petersburg British-American church and the secretary of a committee of
investigation into Marsden’s work) which claimed that the committee had found against her;
although the details of the allegations against her and the committee’s findings remain unclear
to this day, they held sufficient power to destroy her reputation and good name, and ‘she died
poor, unmarried, and forgotten at Springfield House, Beechcroft Road, Wandsworth, London, Robinson, Wayward Women, pp. 142-3; cf. Arctic
on 26 March 1931, having been an invalid for thirty years. In her prime, however, Kate Marsden Bibliography 10964 (New York: 1892 ed.); Cross, In the
must have had a magnetism and urgency which are not conveyed by the stilted phrases of Land of the Romanovs J102 (London: 1892 ed.);
Johnson’s Life of Kate Marsden [...] The real Kate Marsden, who charmed the tsarina and her Nerhood 397 (London: 1892 ed.); Theakstone, p. 174
ladies-in-waiting and blasted her way through the embattled bureaucracy of imperial Russia, (London: 1892 ed.).
must have been a very different and infinitely more impressive figure’ (loc. cit.)
...WHO ‘DIED POOR, UNMARRIED, AND FORGOTTEN’
 Poles, Peaks & Skies

NARWHALS, ESKIMOS AND THE PERILS OF TRAVELLING ON ICE:

JOSEPHINE DIEBITSCH-PEARY’S ARCTIC JOURNAL

26. DIEBITSCH-PEARY, Josephine. My Arctic

Journal. A Year among Ice-Fields and Eskimos...
With an Account of the Great White Journey
across Greenland by Robert E. Peary. London:
The De Vinne Press for Longmans, Green, and Co.,
1893.
8vo (210 x 150mm), pp. [4 (blank l., title, imprint
on verso)], half-tone frontispiece retaining tissue
guard, 4 plates printed in colours and 16 half-tone
plates, all retaining tissue guards, one map after
Robert Peary; half-tone and line illustrations in
the text; a few light spots or marks, l. 1/4
reinforced at fore-edge with adhesive tape;
original green cloth over bevelled boards, boards
with borders and panels in blind, spine lettered
and ruled in gilt, black endpapers; spine slightly
leant, extremities slightly rubbed and bumped,
otherwise a very good copy; provenance: Dundee
University Club (contemporary booklabel on
upper pastedown, with manuscript insertions,
stating that ‘This vol. is new till 12th Feb [18]94’).
£350
First UK edition. Josephine Diebitsch
(1863-1935) married the sailor and Arctic
explorer Robert Peary (1856-1920) on 11
August 1888, and accompanied him on
three Arctic expeditions. My Arctic Journal
recounts Josephine’s experiences during
the second, trans-Greenland expedition
(1891-1892), during which she travelled
with Robert to his Arctic base camp and
spent twelve months on the shores of
McCormick Bay at 77° N (i.e. halfway
between the Arctic Circle and the North
Pole), where she was the first Caucasian
woman that the residents of a nearby Inuit
settlement had seen. Robert then left her
for his three-month crossing of North
Greenland – which he describes in ‘The
Great White Journey’, the final chapter of
the volume (pp. 221-240) – before they
returned to Philadelphia in September
1892.
Josephine’s last chapter (‘Greenland
Revisited’, pp. 211-220) is headed
‘Anniversary Lodge, Bowdoin Bay,
Greenland, August 20, 1893’ and describes
the couple’s arrival in Greenland in the
summer of 1893 at the beginning of their
third expedition. In September 1893,
Josephine would give birth to their
daughter Marie Ahnighito Peary, who was
the first Caucasian child born in the Arctic
and was nicknamed ‘The Snow Baby’.
NMM I, 981; Theakstone, p. 73; cf. Arctic
Bibliography 13221 (NY: 1893 ed.).
27. WARREN, Mary Bowers. Little Journeys Abroad. With Original Illustrations by George Poles, Peaks & Skies
H. Boughton..., E.K. Johnson..., Irving R. Wiles, J.A. Holzer, Will H. Drake. Boston: John
Wilson and Son, University Press, Cambridge, MA for Joseph Knight Company, 1895.
8vo (182 x 122mm), pp. xiii, [1 (blank)], 313, [1 (blank)]; 38 full-page and numerous smaller
illustrations, all in black and white, and engraved publisher’s device, head- and tailpieces;
original green publisher’s cloth, elaborately gilt, upper board lettered and blocked in gilt with
elaborate floral/ornamental pattern, spine richly gilt, all edges gilt, black endpapers;
extremities lightly rubbed and bumped, nonetheless a very good copy. £100

AN AMERICAN LADY’S OBSERVATIONS ABROAD – FROM PARIS TO ALGIERS

First edition. American tourist Mary Bowers Warren wrote this book based on her
experiences in France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Algiers, and England, in order to add her
own perspective to the then well-established canon of travel writing, ‘passing over subjects
written upon by older and more experienced travellers’, and instead choosing to recount
‘those little episodes and experiences which add so much to the charm of Old-World life’ (pp.
vii-viii).
The narratives themselves are, indeed, charming: the chapter on Hanover, for example –
which frequently mentions the visiting emperor, the electors and other members of genteel
society, German composers and authors, etc. – contains a thorough introduction to German
Christmas, from marzipan to Christmas trees. The extensive chapter on Algiers similarly
presents fine observations on the Arab quarters, life and people (which are also depicted in
many evocative portraits, in national dress) in entertaining detail. Mary’s final trips to ‘Golf-
Land’ (Aldeburgh) and Oxford are recounted with similar zest, and much wonder at foreign
customs.
Perhaps the most immediately striking aspect of this well-preserved copy is its binding, based
on a design by illustrator-painter Amy Maria Sacker (1872-1965), who is credited for it in the
list of illustrations (p. xi). Sacker must have drawn up the design just after finishing her studies
at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and according to the publishers’
introduction, like the numerous illustrations ‘from original drawings by well-known artists’
and further details of decoration, the cover design was ‘specially made for the book’ (p. viii). It
is very much an expression of the American aesthetic of the time – later editions show a much
simpler design.
H.F. Smith, American Travellers Abroad (1999) W35; Theakstone, p. 285.
 Poles, Peaks & Skies
28. LINDBERGH, Anne Morrow. Listen! The Wind... With Foreword and Map Drawings by Charles A.
Lindbergh. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1938.
8vo (203 x 136mm), pp. xii, 275, [1 (blank)]; 3 full-page maps and one illustration after Charles Lindbergh;
one half-tone plate; original red cloth blocked in gilt with airplane design on upper board and lettered in
gilt on the spine, map endpapers after Charles Lindbergh, top edges blue, pictorial dustwrapper, with
design after Charles Lindbergh, retaining price, glassine dustwrapper, morocco backed slipcase, spine
lettered and decorated in gilt; lettering on spine slightly dulled, dustwrapper slightly rubbed and chipped
at edges, glassine dustwrapper browned and chipped at edges, nonetheless a very good, bright copy,
retaining the pictorial and glassine dustwrappers. £400

ANNE AND CHARLES LINDBERGH’S FLIGHT ACROSS THE SOUTHERN ATLANTIC

First edition. Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001) met the After crossing the northern part of the
celebrated American aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1927, when Atlantic from New York to
her father Dwight Morrow, the American ambassador to Copenhagen, the Lindberghs flew
Mexico, invited Lindbergh to visit the country. They married south to Africa and then crossed the
in 1929, she soon learnt to fly under his tutelage, and then southern part of the Atlantic; Listen!
became her husband’s trusted co-pilot. Indeed, in 1930, she The Wind describes the flight across the
became the first woman to receive a United States Glider southern Atlantic. The book reflects
Pilot Licence – one of numerous ‘firsts’ as a female pilot. In the collaborative nature of the flight:
1931 the Lindberghs undertook a historic series of flights in the body of the book is Anne Morrow
their specially adapted Lockheed Sirius, Tingmissartog, Lindbergh’s work, complemented by
travelling across Alaska and Canada to Japan and China, in Charles Lindbergh’s foreword,
order to explore new routes for airmail. Anne Lindbergh appendix, maps, and dustwrapper
recorded the experiences in her best-selling book North to design. Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s
the Orient (New York: 1935) – which won the inaugural exploits earned her the National
National Book Award for Nonfiction – and in 1933 the Geographic Society’s Hubbard Gold
Lindberghs made a survey flight around the North Atlantic Medal in 1934.
Ocean: ‘[t]he purpose of the flight was to study the air-routes Bennett, A Practical Guide to American
between America and Europe. At that time, the air-routes of
Book Collecting (1663-1940), p. 237.
the world were entering their final stages of development.
The countries had already been crossed and the continents
connected. It remained only for the oceans to be spanned. AN AWARD-WINNING BOOK
Their great overwater distances constituted the last major
barrier to the commerce of the air’ (p. v).
 Poles, Peaks & Skies

THE PILOT’S LICENCE AND LOG BOOK OF A 1930s ENGLISH AVIATRIX

29. LUND, Katherine Flora – Certificate of

Competency and Licence to Fly Private Flying
Machines. London: Director of Home Civil Aviation
for the Air Ministry of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland, 21 February 1939.
8vo (136 x 95mm), pp. [1 (blank)], [1 (Certificate of
Competency)], [1 (blank)], [7 (Licence)], [1 (Certificate
of Competency)], [1 (blank)]; printed document, with
two black-and-white passport photographs tipped in,
stamps, signatures, typed and manuscript, printed
expiry card with expiry date of 15 March 1941 added
by hand; original royal blue cloth, upper board
lettered in black and with air ministry device blocked
in black, sewn with single blue-and-white cord,
regulation printed on lower pastedown; extremities
very lightly rubbed and bumped.
[With:]

K.F. LUND – Pilot’s Log Book. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, [May 1930].
Oblong 8vo in 12s (102 x 158mm), pp. [1 (blank)], [1 (Instructions for Use)], [1 (blank)], [4 (pilot’s
profile)], [186 (Record of Flights)], [1 (blank)]; pre-printed document completed in manuscript,
including 18 pp. of ‘Record of Flights’; original royal blue cloth, upper board lettered in black, cloth
hinges, pocket on rear pastedown; extremities lightly rubbed and bumped, boards bowing a little,
otherwise very good.
Provenance: Katherine Flora Lund (1908-2000). £300
Katherine Lund (née MacAndrew), better known as While at Pallinghurst in the mid-to late 1930s, Lund and her brother Roderic took flying lessons,
Kitty to her friends and family, grew up on the and Lund gained this Certificate of Competency and Licence to Fly Private Flying Machines, for
Pallinghurst estate in Surrey, with horse riding, ‘All types of landplanes’, on 21 February 1939. Her aviator’s certificate from the Brooklands
yachting and other sporting activities a significant Flying Club had been secured two weeks earlier, and she was one of two women among the
part of her life. In 1930 she married the farmer seventy new aviators listed in the Flight magazine’s issue of 23 February. Lund’s log book
Alfred S. Lund, and the couple lived in South Africa documents all her flights as a trainee pilot and following her qualification, spanning a period
before returning to England in 1933. When from 10 October 1938 to 1 August 1939. Many of these are local, but later flights also cross-
Katherine’s husband passed away in 1934, and soon country and lasting up to 105 minutes. The entry for 5 January 1939 contains the first note in the
after her second son was born, she lived at Remarks field: her ‘First Solo!’, which lasted for five minutes.
Pallinghurst, where she had spent much of her Brooklands Flying Club, where Lund had trained, had been established in 1933, won a War
childhood. In 1943 she married Capt. William James Department contract for pilot training for the Royal Air Force, and opened an Elementary Flying
Affleck Shepherd, RA, the son of an artist whose Training School in 1935. The school was equipped with Sir Geoffrey de Havilland’s celebrated
work was frequently featured in Punch, and a keen DH82 ‘Tiger Moth’ biplanes – the most popular British training aeroplane of the period, which
horse sportsman. Kitty’s son Mark (1931-1956) was also used by many civilian pilots, including Amy Johnson, who made the first flight from
became a famous racing driver, who was tragically England to Australia by a female pilot in one – and all of Lund’s flights were in Tiger Moths. One
killed in a race at Silverstone. of Lund’s contemporaries, D. Bradley-Watson, told Motor Sport Magazine about the experience
(issue of November 1971, p. 38), mentioning the two pilots Lund trained with and recorded in
her log book, Waller and Cliff: ‘Ken Waller was Chief Instructor, assisted by Leslie Cliff and
Roland Morris. The latter had been an airline pilot with Scottish Airways, and said that he had
come to Brooklands to relax from the more arduous duties of flying in the Highlands in bad
weather. On occasion he would play the violin for us, and was much in demand by the female
pupils, as he was a handsome bachelor. Leslie Cliff was a quiet man who could be extremely
sarcastic if you failed to please him in the air […]. [H]e and his wife managed to find time to be a
world famous ice figure skating team’.
Lund’s flying activities were cut short by the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 –
in August all civil flying activity had ceased at Brooklands, and this is consistent with Lund’s final
entry in her log book, by which point she had logged 38.5 hours in the air. She also appears to
have hoped to return to flying, in whatever capacity possible or necessary, during the war:
although this log book does not contain notes on further flights, the licence was renewed in
March 1940, and (as the bound-in expiration card shows) extended until March 1941.
 Poles, Peaks & Skies

30. WILLERTON, Joan. Through France to Spain. Tour of France and Spain in 1958. Driven by Joan Willerton in her 1938 Vauxhall, with Mary Dunn and
Margaret Barraclough. [Europe: 26 July – 17 August 1958].
4to (203 x 160mm), 41 ll. of which last 6 blank; manuscript written in blue ink on ruled paper, 25 tipped-in photographs, 29 mostly photographic postcards,
4 leporellos, and 28 printed brochures and other ephemera, one loosely inserted embroidered postcard; spiral-bound notebook with stiff blue paper
boards, upper wrapper with paper label from the Spanish State Tourist Department in colours of Spanish flag, with manuscript title ‘Through France to
Spain’; extremities lightly rubbed and bumped, some light marginal creasing, one l. loose, nonetheless generally good. £120

A neatly-written manuscript travel journal, heavily illustrated with photographs, postcards, and ephemera, which documents the experiences of the party’s
driver and writer of this journal, Joan Willerton (?1914-2011), and her two female travelling companions from Empingham in the East Midlands. Their
travels were as exciting as they were educational: observations on landmarks, countries and people, through France to Madrid, from Valencia up the
Spanish coast, and back to Empingham – a round trip of 4,000 miles – are interspersed with anecdotes. For instance, en route to El Escorial near Madrid,
the ladies encounter two men armed with some knowledge of English as well as two sports guns, puzzled at their travelling with ‘no gentlemen escorts’ or
guns, and concerned about their safety. Ms Willerton drily observes: ‘Spanish girls just do not go about unescorted, apparently’. Ironically, their safety was
most compromised in London upon their return to England, where Mary Dunn’s and Margaret Barraclough’s cases were stolen from their car while the trio
attended a theatre performance. Clothes, photographic films, presents and souvenirs were lost, ‘So we finished up our holiday at Scotland Yard’.
Although the three women undertook their tour in a twenty-year old Vauxhall, Joan Willerton records that she picked up her camera in Peterborough on
the first day of travel. Her photographs, which apparently survived the theft, are supplemented with ephemera she gathered along the trip, and make this
illustrated journal a wonderful document capturing experiences of independent female tourists in France and Spain in the late 1950s.
 Asian Adventures

31. BISHOP, Isabella Lucy (née BIRD). Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. An Account of
Travels in the Interior, Including Visits to the Aborigines of Yezo and the Shrines of Nikkô
and Isé. London: R. & R. Clark for John Murray, 1880.

2 volumes, 8vo (200 x 130mm), pp. I: xxiii, [1 (blank)], 398; II: [i-v], vi-xi, [1 (blank)], [2
(illustrations and errata)], 383, [1 (blank)], 24 (publisher’s advertisements dated October
1880); half-titles, one folding map printed in black and blue by W. & A.K. Johnston,
woodcut frontispieces with tissue guards, woodcut illustrations and diagrams, one full-
page, letterpress tables in the text; original pictorial cloth gilt with ornamental design in
black and gilt on upper boards and spine, lower boards with double-rule blind border and
central blind device, dark grey endpapers; extremities lightly rubbed and bumped with
unobtrusive fraying at ends of spines, upper hinge of vol. I cracked and lower starting, light
marginal creasing in quires II, R-T, nevertheless a very fresh, bright copy; provenance: J.B.
Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia (importer’s ticket on I, p. v) – C.N. Weygandt, December
1880 (inscriptions on front free endpapers, presumably C.N. Weygandt of Philadelphia,
financier and patron of the arts). £700
ONE OF THE EARLIEST WESTERN ACCOUNTS OF JAPAN

First edition. ‘Isabella Bird was recommended to leave home in April 1878 to recruit
her health, and she chose to visit Japan. The northern route she chose had never been
traversed in its entirety by a European and as a woman travelling alone, her experiences
generally differed from those of previous travellers. Soon after her arrival, she started
the search for a servant and a pony. By June she was on trek: her outfit weighed 110
pounds, and included a folding chair, an india rubber bath, and bedding; this included a
light canvas stretcher, supposedly secure from fleas. For food she took only Liebig’s
extract of meat, raisins and chocolate; she took some brandy in case of need. Miss Bird's
account of her travel through Japan lives up to her expectations. It was the last to offer
the reader a more-or-less constant source of pleasure. She left Japan on Christmas Eve
1878. Isabella Bird returned to Japan five times in 1894-96, spending eleven months
there during that time’ (Theakstone, p. 24).
As C. Goto-Jones comments in Conjuring Asia (Cambridge: 2016), ‘one of the first travellers to write an account of
Japan (after it opened its doors to the West in the 1850s) was the remarkable woman, Isabella Bird [...], whose
Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880) caught the public imagination of this previously unvisited land’ (p. 107).
Cordier Japonica col. 631; Theakstone, p. 23; Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 82 (incorrect collation for vol. I).

WRITTEN AFTER THE EMPIRE BEGAN TO OPEN TO THE WEST IN THE 1850s
 Asian Adventures

A RARE ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST EUROPEAN WOMAN TO ENTER TIBET

32. TAYLOR, Annie Royle. Pioneering in Tibet. The Origin and Progress of ‘The Tibetan
Pioneer Mission’, together with My Experiences in Tibet, and Some Facts about the Country.
London: Morgan and Scott, [?1897].
8vo (189 x 123mm), pp. [i]-vi (blank, frontispiece, title, illustration credits, preface), [vii-viii
(contents, map)], [9]-78, [1 (letter from G.H. Rouse, D.D. and H. Rylands Brown)], [1 (publisher’s
advertisement); half-tone photographic frontispiece retaining tissue guard, 10 half-tone
photographic illustrations (3 full-page) in the text, one full-page map in the text; ornamental
initials, title and running titles in gothic type; D3 lightly creased in margin; publisher’s original
brown cloth, upper board blocked in black and lettered in gilt, mounted photographic
illustration within black decorative frame, lower board blocked in blind with central floral
design, beige-and-brown patterned endpapers; extremities lightly rubbed and bumped, spine
slightly leaning, endpapers with minimal offsetting, nonetheless a very good, bright copy.
£1500

A VERY BRIGHT AND FRESH COPY

First edition thus. First published as The Origin of the Tibetan
Mission (20 pp.) in 1894, Pioneering in Tibet describes the
experiences of British traveller and missionary Hannah (‘Annie’)
Taylor (1855-1922). Annie ‘grew up restless and discontented
until conversion to evangelical Christianity at the age of thirteen
gave her a purpose in life by making her determined to become a
missionary. Although she was strongly opposed by her father, her
iron will prevailed, and, after spending the intervening years
working in the slums of Brighton and London and studying
medicine in London, she sailed for Shanghai on 12 September
1884, in the service of the China Inland Mission’ (ODNB). In 1886
she was posted to north-west China and became even more ‘In May 1894 she and Pontso moved to Yatung in this border area,
curious about the ‘forbidden land’, eventually convinced that the from where there was a view of Tibet down a narrow valley. Here
Tibetan mission was her calling. the British had set up a market to promote trade with Tibet, and
Accompanied by two men and Pontso (a young Tibetan whom here Annie opened a little store. […] She was visited at Yatung by
she had converted to Christianity), and disguised as a pilgrim nun, William Carey, who in 1902 published her edited diary. During
Taylor embarked on a dangerous, seven month journey to Tibet, 1904 she served as a military nurse with the Younghusband
covering some 1,300 miles, which cost one of her servants his life. expedition. In time she tired, and, leaving Pontso to run the store,
She was the first European woman to enter the Forbidden Land she stayed in Yatung until about 1907’ (ODNB).
of Tibet, came closer to Lhasa than any European had since the Although this work is often dated to 1895, it includes
French Catholic missionaries Évariste Régis Huc and Joseph transcriptions of letters dating from as late as June 1897, which
Gabet (1846), and benefited from her knowledge of the language suggests a later publication date – perhaps during Taylor’s visit to
and habits of Tibetan natives and England in 1897, when she also she sold two consignments of
travellers, which she had acquired while Tibetan artefacts to the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art
living among lamas and refugees. (now the National Museum of Scotland). The work is rare on the
However, just before she reached Lhasa market, particularly in the original binding and in such clean
she was betrayed and had to return to condition; similarly, COPAC only locates two copies in the UK.
China.
Cordier, Sinica, col. 2921; Marshall, Britain and Tibet (2003) 1963;
Theakstone, p. 265; Robinson, Wayward Women, pp. 172-3.
 Asian Adventures

A RARE GUIDE TO THE CHINESE LANGUAGE BY AN ENGLISH MISSIONARY WORKING IN CHINA

33. FOSTER, Amy. An Easy Introduction to the Fascinating Study of Chinese Characters [drophead title]. [?Shanghai: ?the author, 1910].
4to (138 x 108mm), pp. iv, 16; printed in Roman and Chinese characters; original stapled grey printed wrappers; slightly marked and chipped,
some corrosion around staples affecting wrappers, nonetheless a very good copy. £275
First edition. Amy Foster (née Jackson, b. 1856) married the
missionary Arnold Foster (b. 1846) in 1882, in Hong Kong, five
years after she herself had first applied to the London
Missionary Society (LMS) and subsequently emigrated to
China. She was strongly involved with the mission’s goals,
established a girls’ boarding school at Wuchang, and advised
the LMS Ladies’ Committee on how to ensure that their female
workers would stay single, and hence working (rather than Amy Foster is often mentioned in the LMS Chronicle,
forcing them to resign from their posts): by not sending them and was elected to significant posts within the Mission
to Canton for language study, where they were likely to meet and beyond over time. Interestingly, her life and role
(by comparison with Hong Kong) an abundance of single men in China brought other famous female travellers
(letter of 17 December 1887, quoted in Rosemary Seton, across her path: in January 1896 she hosted the
Western Daughters in Eastern Lands: British Missionary Women travelling Isabella Bishop and Miss Williams who were
in Asia (Santa Barbara, CA: 2013), p. 72). delayed on their journey down the Yangtse river; this
was three years before the LMS published Amy
Foster’s book In the Valley of the Yangtse (1899).
Due to her linguistic and educational interests, Amy Foster
published, among other things, an English and Chinese Pocket
Dictionary in the Mandarin Dialect (1893, fifth edition in 1916). Doubtless due to its fragile nature, this work is very
Her Easy Introduction, which lists 400 characters with an scarce; we cannot trace any copies of it in the UK, it
introduction for the student, was advertised in The Chinese is not recorded in Cordier Sinica, and WorldCat only
Recorder (1911) as having been published in October 1910, and it identifies two copies (Yale and UC Berkeley).
may be considered a companion to Foster’s dictionary, since it
provides guidance on how to read the dictionary’s Mandarin
words both for comprehension and out loud, to communicate
with others. Undoubtedly many female missionaries and their
daughters learned from her work.
Asian Adventures
34. FOX, Lady Dorothy. My Nightmare Journey. London: P.B. Mr. A. J. Moore-Bennett, of Peking’ (p. 110), and is on ‘the Western marches.
Beddow, 1927. Geography. Flora. Fauna. Some Account of the People and their History’.
Moore-Bennett also provided the photographs for the volume; some of his
8vo (208 x 138mm), pp. xii, 128, [1 (publisher’s device)], [1 (blank)];
other photographs, including of the Great Wall, are now held by the Royal
half-tone photographic portrait frontispiece with facsimile
Geographical Society.
signature, 34 half-tone photographic plates after A. J. Moore-
Bennett, one map, and one plan; original green cloth gilt, upper
board with blind ruled frame, gilt lettering and gilt dragon on upper
board, spine lettered and ruled in gilt; extremities lightly rubbed and
...WITH HER HUSBAND’S AUTOGRAPH LETTER,
bumped, some very light marks, very light creasing at head and foot SENDING IT TO THE CHINA EXPRESS AND TELEGRAPH
of spine, nonetheless a very good copy.
[With:] Dorothy’s husband Sir Harry Fox KBE, CMG (1872-1936) held a succession of
posts in China as Student Interpreter (1890), Consul (1905), Consul-General
Sir Harry Halton FOX. Autograph letter signed (‘Harry H. Fox’) to (1913), Commercial Attaché for China (1917), and Commercial Counsellor to
the editor of the China Express and Telegraph. Upton Lodge, British Legation, Beijing (1918-1929), before returning to England, where he
Broadstairs, 4 February 1928. was appointed Justice of the Peace for the Cinque Ports in 1931. His letter
was written as part of the promotional campaign for the book, and is
4 pp. on one bifolium, 8vo (177 x 113mm), with printed letterhead; a addressed to the editor of the China Express and Telegraph (formerly
few very light spots, edges lightly creased, otherwise very good. London and China Express), which had been established in 1922 as ‘A weekly
Together £500 review for all interested in China, Japan, Malaya, Philippines, Siam, Borneo,
Java, etc.’. Mr Fox writes that his wife’s book had originally been circulated in
a private production, which received so many ‘letters of appreciation […]
A REVIEW COPY SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR... that we have persuaded her to have it published & placed on sale in England
& China. I am now making the necessary arrangements but should be
First edition, signed by the author on the front free endpaper. grateful if you could insert a short notice of the book in your paper, as I think
Dorothy Fox travelled through China in 1913-1914, following her my wife must be known to a considerable number of your China & Straits
husband’s appointment as Consul-General of Hankow in 1913. The readers’. Fox points out that the book presents ‘a vivid & accurate picture of
journey took her from Kunming (formerly Yunnan-Fu) to Haiphong the life that many English people lead in the back blocks of China and it
by rail, then by steamer and boat up the Yangtze River and by road contains some interesting sidelights on Chinese characters’, and confirms
to Chengdu in Sichuan. Her account of her journey, illustrated with that he has not sent the book to any other newspapers.
photographic plates, tells of surprisingly uncomfortable nights in
canvas hammocks on a house boat, and the threat of robbers and Later in 1928, a somewhat dismissive review in The Geographical Journal
dirty roads, but also of delicacies including popcorn stuck together (No 71, p. 600) states that the book provides ‘fresh impressions on the
with burnt sugar, the ‘pretty sight’ of fathers carrying their babies in immeasurable poverty and dirt of China’ and that ‘the authoress obviously
baskets, of local fashions and the fascinating details of everyday did not come into contact with the cultured’; it also judges that the
life. The appendix on pp. 111-128 was ‘written for me by my friend, ‘illustrations, from photographs, are the best part of the book’.
 Asian Adventures
35. MANNING, Ruth. ‘Aurangabad Photo Budget No. 7. March, 1935. From Miss R. Manning, C.M.S.
Aurangabad, Deccan, India’. Aurangabad, 1935.
21 gelatin silver prints (55 x 80mm or 80 x 55mm each), each neatly captioned in manuscript ink below, mounted
on 6 leaves of handmade album of brown parcel paper (185 x 140mm), titled in ink on upper wrapper, sewn with
pink thread; slightly creased and torn at extremities, generally very good. £500

Ruth Manning (1900-1981), missionary, nurse and keen amateur photographer, served as a Church Mission
Society missionary in Western India from 1930 to 1966. The CMS had been founded in 1799 and begun its
overseas mission in 1804, but soon spread to Canada, New Zealand, and the Mediterranean areas, and across
Africa to the Middle East and Asia. India had always been one of its most important areas, and Manning, who had
joined the Aurangabad mission by 1932, found herself a part of one of the most successful stations in the country:
during her service, and especially in the period leading up to her compilation of this photo album, baptisms
increased dramatically from 75 in 1934 to 281 in 1935. Manning worked at the Pachod hospital throughout the
1930s and early 1940s, was Guide District Commissioner from 1934, moved on to Nasik in 1946 and continued her
work in India until 1966.

A PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNAL
BY AN ENGLISH MISSIONARY IN INDIA

This album is one of the regular bulletins or ‘Photo Budgets’ that Manning
sent to her family in England while in Aurangabad. Dated for March 1935, it
documents the peoples she encountered and converted to the Christian faith;
the infrastructures and technologies introduced by the missionaries (the
album opens with a photograph of the station’s first car, which is followed by
an image of a cart, captioned ‘Before we got the car!’); shows the pastor W.H.
Bishop and his wife founding the hospital and Ruth Manning herself, as she
irrigates the eyes of a patient in an open field. Together, the photographs in
this album provide a remarkable first-person insight into the work of
missionaries in India in the period.
 South America & The Tropics

36. CULBERTSON, Rosamond. Rosamond Culbertson: or, A Narrative of the

Captivity and Sufferings of an American Female under the Popish Priests, in the Island
of Cuba; With a Full Disclosure of their Manners and Customs. Written by herself. With
an Introduction and Notes, by Samuel B. Smith, Late a Priest in the Church of Rome.
London: James S. Hodson, 1837.
8vo (171 x 107mm), pp. viii, 144; some light and even browning, very occasional light
foxing; contemporary [?original] green textured cloth, printed paper title-label on spine,
completely unopened and uncut; extremities lightly rubbed and bumped, spine
slightly faded, a few marks on the upper board, nevertheless a very good copy in a
contemporary binding; provenance: Williams’s Library, Cheltenham (contemporary
inkstamp on upper pastedown). £800

A LURID ANTI-CATHOLIC CAPTIVITY NARRATIVE, SET IN CUBA

First British edition. Originally published in New York in Although Rosamond Culbertson’s narrative is prefaced by ‘Five
1836, Rosamond Culbertson is the tale of a ship-wrecked Certificates Respecting the Character of the Authoress’ written by four
American widow who became the lover of a priest pastors, others of the Presbyterian Church and Culbertson’s physician,
disguised as a citizen in Cuba – a ‘fiend in human shape’ the narrative proved to be too scandalous for contemporary audiences –
with whom she lived, as a prisoner, for five years, between murder, robbery, assassination, and other, unspeakable crimes feature
1828 and 1833. The introduction by Smith, apparently a prominently – and was evidently coloured by an anti-Catholic agenda.
reformed Catholic priest, explains that: ‘[b]eing mistress of Contemporary reviews dismissed it entirely, accusing both the book and
his house and the queen of his heart, all the domestic those who give credence to Culbertson (or the Canadian nun Maria
concerns were under her controul. He poured out into her Monk, who recorded the sexual abuse by priests in a Montreal convent in
bosom the feelings that flowed through his polluted heart, Maria Monk: The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed,
and imparted to her, not only his own secrets, but those 1836) of being unwise and undermining attempts to reform the Catholic
that were intrusted to him under the seal of confession. church, since the claims made in such books were so evidently far-
She was the witness of his character under all the various fetched and exaggerated. ‘That corrupt and abandoned priests in the
shapes which it assumed: at home, under the exterior of a West Indies and South America are addicted to all manner of vice and
priest; abroad, under that of a citizen. She was his crime, is easy to believe. But the Narrative of Rosamond has too much
companion at the ball room, the masquerades, the the air of romance, and too much of the unnatural, to be credited. She
gambling-tables, and the tea-parties. She […] was acknowledges herself to have been once a crazy woman; and her book is
introduced by him to his fellow priests, who were as proof enough that she ought still to be under treatment for the same
profligate as himself, and was conducted, dressed as a infirmity’ (Calvin Colton, Protestant Jesuitism (New York: 1836), p. 29).
monk, into the sacred (!) recesses of the convents’ (pp. vi-
vii).

This work is uncommon in either the American and British first

editions, and is rarely found on the market in such original condition as
this copy, which appears to be in its original cloth binding and retains the
original printed spine label. A list of ‘New Books’ in the The British
Magazine, and Monthly Register of Religious and Ecclesiastical Information,
Parochial History, and Documents Respecting the State of the Poor, Progress
of Education, &c. records that it was issued in a cloth binding at 3 shillings
(vol. XI (1837), p. 358).
Palau 278436; cf. Sabin 73205 (New York: 1836 ed.).
 South America & The Tropics

37. BRASSEY, Anna [‘Annie’], Lady BRASSEY. A Voyage in the ‘Sunbeam’

our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months. London: Spottiswoode and Co. for
Longmans, Green, and Co., 1878.
8vo (213 x 133mm), pp. xv, [1 (‘Note’)], 511, [1 (blank)]; wood-engraved
frontispiece, title-vignette, and vignette portrait on dedication, 8 wood-
engraved plates, wood-engraved illustrations in the text, and head- and
tailpieces, all by G. Pearson after A.Y. Bingham et al., 6 colour-printed
lithographic maps by Edward Weller and Stanford’s Geographical
Establishment, 2 folding, and folding lithographic table by Weller printed in
red and black; some variable spotting; contemporary half red hard-grained
morocco over marbled boards by Mudie, spine gilt in compartments, lettered
directly in 2, others decorated in blind, marbled endpapers, all edges marbled;
extremities lightly rubbed, otherwise a very good copy; provenance: Charles
Arthur Wynne Finch (1841-1903, engraved armorial bookplate dated 1883 on
upper pastedown) – Christopher Jarvis Healey Hogwood (1941-2014,
musician, musicologist, author, and bibliophile; presentation inscription on
front flyleaf). £300
Fifth edition, published in the same year as the first. Encouraged by The voyage was to make Annie Brassey a celebrity not because she
the success of her travel books The Flight of the “Meteor” ([s.l.]: had been round the world in a luxury yacht, but because she struck
1866) and A Cruise in “Eothen” (London: 1873), Lady Annie Brassey exactly the right note in her book about the adventure, using the
(1839-1887) and her husband Thomas, Baron Brassey (1836-1918), entries in her journal to describe rambles ashore and daily life afloat
decided to undertake a circumnavigation in the Sunbeam, their 531- [...]. A Voyage in the “Sunbeam” (1878) was [...] a best-seller
ton, three-masted, topsail schooner, with a 350-horsepower steam overnight, reached its nineteenth edition in 1896, and was translated
engine, which had been launched in 1874. The Sunbeam embarked into French, German, Italian, Swedish, and Hungarian [...] The cruises
on 1 July 1876 with a complement of forty-four comprising the of the Sunbeam may have resembled family picnics rather than
Brasseys and their children, a small party of friends, a professional voyages of discovery, but Annie Brassey, who inspired and organized
crew, and a complete domestic staff. Their voyage took them ‘across them, is not to be denied the status of a true traveller. A poor sailor,
the south Atlantic, through the Strait of Magellan into the Pacific never really well at sea, she dared all it could do to her, in order that
Ocean, continuing by way of Tahiti, Hawaii, and Japan to Penang and she might visit the farthest corners of the earth. As her husband
thence to Ceylon, Aden, and the Red Sea. While the Sunbeam passed wrote, “the voyage would not have been undertaken and assuredly it
through the Suez Canal, Annie Brassey and the children went would never have been completed without the impulse derived from
overland to Cairo to visit the pyramids, rejoining the party at her perseverance and determination”’ (ODNB). The Appendix on pp.
Alexandria. Their arrival at Hastings on 27 May 1877 completed the [481]-492 contains a summary of the entire voyage, compiled from
eleven-month voyage. It had been a complete success, uneventful the log-book.
except for a dangerous flooding of the decks in a high sea off Ushant For the 1st ed., cf. Hawaiian National Bibliography 3202; O’Reilly and
and their rescue of the crew of a ship on fire near Rio. The monotony Reitmann 1315; Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 203; Theakstone, p.
of the days at sea was varied by excursions ashore, planned and led 32.
by Annie Brassey to the colourful street markets of Rio, Valparaíso,
and Singapore, and to scenes of natural beauty in Tahiti, Ceylon, and ‘A BEST-SELLER OVERNIGHT
Hawaii with its thrilling volcanoes.
[WHICH] REACHED ITS NINETEENTH EDITION IN 1896’
 South America & The Tropics

38. BRASSEY, Anna [‘Annie’], Lady BRASSEY. In the Trades, the Tropics, & the
Roaring Forties. London: Spottiswoode & Co. for Longmans, Green, & Co., 1885.
4to (267 x 184mm), pp. [2 (inserted limitation l.)], xiv, [2 (maps, verso blank)], 532;
wood-engraved title-illustration printed in red and black ink on india paper and
mounted, wood-engraved dedication-border, illustrations, head- and tailpieces
and initials, all by G. Pearson and J. Cooper after R.T. Pritchett, printed on india
and mounted, one lithographic chart of ‘Temperature of Air and Water’ and 9
lithographic maps, all by and after Edward Weller, printed in colours on india and
mounted, 2 of the maps folding; occasional light spotting, fore-edges of a few ll.
and one folding map slightly creased and chipped, upper hinge skilfully reinforced
and front flyleaf skilfully reinserted; original half vellum gilt over grey cloth by
Simpson and Bevington, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, marbled endpapers, top
edges gilt, others uncut; some light marking, extremities slightly rubbed and
bumped, nonetheless a very good, clean copy; provenance: Maud Ernestine (née
Rendel), Lady Gladstone of Hawarden, 3 January 1890 (1865-1941, dated
presentation inscription on front flyleaf, ‘Miss Maud Rendel from Lord Brassey
with sincere congratulations and good wishes’; engraved bookplate as Lady
Gladstone on upper pastedown) – Linda Sloss (20th-century bookplate on front
free endpaper; inscription dated February 1969 on front flyleaf, gifting the book
to:) – ‘Muz’. £950
 THE RARE LARGE-PAPER LIMITED EDITION

First edition, no. 226 of 250 large-paper copies with illustrations This copy was inscribed by Lord Brassey on 3 January 1890 (some
on india. In the Trades, Tropics, & the Roaring Forties was the last three years after his wife’s death), to the Hon. Maud Rendel, who
work to be published during her lifetime by Annie Brassey, and it would marry Henry Neville Gladstone, 1st Baron Gladstone of
describes a voyage undertaken with her husband Thomas, Baron Hawarden on 31 January 1890, and it seems likely that this volume
Brassey in 1883. They travelled from Dartmouth to Funchal as was given to her as an engagement present. Thomas Brassey
passengers on the Norham Castle and then embarked upon the (1836-1918), was elected the Liberal Member of Parliament for
Sunbeam, which crossed the Atlantic to the Carribean, reaching Hastings in 1868 and held the seat until 1886. In 1880 he was
Trinidad at the end of October 1883, and then proceeded via appointed Civil Lord of the Admiralty in Gladstone's second
Venezuela, Jamaica, and Cuba to the Bahamas. The ship departed administration and in 1884 Maud Rendel’s uncle G.W. Rendel took
for its return journey on 22 November 1883, crossing the Atlantic over the role and Brassey was made Parliamentary Secretary to
via Bermuda and the Azores, and returning to Dartmouth on 30 the Admiralty, holding the position until the end of the parliament
December 1883. in 1885. Following his resignation as Prime Minister, Gladstone
travelled to Norway with the Brasseys on the Sunbeam in August
As a girl, Lady Brassey had been fascinated by botany, and this
1885, and in 1886 he raised Brassey to the peerage in his
voyage ‘gave her ample opportunities for engaging in her
botanical pursuits. In Venezuela [she] travelled by mule to reach resignation honours.
the luxuriant verdure of the jungle. There was the Bog Walk in Cundall, West Indies, 2344; Theakstone, p. 32; Robinson, Wayward
Jamaica, to the beauty of which no words could do justice. She Women, p. 204.
admired the wild luxuriance of nature in the Azores, where the
vegetation appeared to combine the products of temperate and
tropic zones’ (Theakstone). The first edition of In the Trades,
Tropics, & the Roaring Forties was published in two forms: this large- INSCRIBED BY LORD BRASSEY
paper issue in a half vellum binding, which was limited to 250
copies, and the more commonly encountered octavo issue bound TO THE FUTURE LADY GLADSTONE
in cloth.
39. BISHOP, Isabella Lucy (née BIRD). The Hawaiian Archipelago: Six Months South America & The Tropics
Amongst the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands...
Seventh Edition. With Illustrations. London: Bradbury, Agnew, & Co. Ltd. for
John Murray, ‘1890’ [but c. 1894].
8vo (188 x 122mm), pp. xv, [1 (illustrations)], 318, [2 (publisher’s
advertisements)], 32 (further publisher’s advertisements dated January 1894);
wood-engraved frontispiece, one folding map by J.D. Cooper, 10 wood-engraved
illustrations and plans, 2 full page, and letterpress tables in the text; original
green cloth, upper board with blind border and central design in gilt, spine
lettered and ruled in gilt, black endpapers, most quires unopened; extremities
very lightly rubbed and bumped, nonetheless an exceptionally bright, largely
unopened copy. £300

‘ONE OF THE CLASSIC (AND MOST OFTEN QUOTED) BOOKS

ON THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS’

Seventh edition. As Bishop states in her preface, ‘I was travelling for health, when
circumstances induced me to land on the group, and the benefit which I derived from the
climate tempted me to remain for nearly seven months. During that time the necessity of
leading a life of open air and exercise as a means of recovery, led me to travel on horseback to
and fro through the islands, exploring the interior, ascending the highest mountains, visiting
the active volcanoes and remote regions that are known to few even of the residents, living
among the natives, and otherwise seeing Hawaiian life in all its phases’ (p. ix).
Bishop’s The Hawaiian Archipelago is composed of thirty-one letters she wrote to her sister
Henrietta and was first published in 1875; this edition follows the text of the revised second
edition, which appeared in 1876 with a new preface and an appendix on ‘Leprosy and the
Leper Settlement on Molokal’, as well as other revisions and amendments. The Hawaiian
National Bibliography judges that it is ‘[o]ne of the classic (and most often quoted) books on the
Hawaiian Islands’, adding that, ‘[i]t was immensely popular and went through many editions’.
For the 1st ed., cf. Hawaiian National Bibliography 3070; Theakstone, p. 23; Robinson,
Wayward Women, p. 81.
 South America & The Tropics

40. MEE, Margaret Ursula. Flowers of the Brazilian Forest. Collected

and Painted by Margaret Mee. Foreword on the Brazilian Forests by
Robert Burle Marx. With a Preface by Sir George Taylor. London: L. van
Leer & Company for The Tryon Gallery in association with George
Rainbird, 1968.
Folio (530 x 390mm), pp. [16 (preliminaries)], [62 (text)], [2 (index, verso
blank)]; title printed in green and black; frontispiece and 31 colour-
lithographed plates after Margaret Mee, all retaining tissue guards, text
illustrations, double-page map after Greville Mee printed in red and
black showing Margaret Mee’s journeys and the locations where the
flowers depicted were collected; original green-morocco-backed,
vellum-tipped marbled boards by Zaehnsdorf, upper board blocked
with gilt design of tejú açu after Mee, spine lettered in gilt, endpapers
with colour-printed tejú açu after Mee, top edges gilt, original clear
dustwrapper, original green cloth slipcase; dustwrapper discoloured by
spine and torn with losses (as often), slipcase a little rubbed at edges,
otherwise a fine copy. £1,250

MEE’S CELEBRATED WORK ON THE AMAZONIAN RAIN FORESTS

First edition, limited to 506 copies, this number 374 of 400. In 1952 the British botanical artist Margaret Mee (1909-1988) moved to Brazil, where she
became fascinated by the country’s flora. Mee spent fifteen years travelling in the Amazon region, making a series of expeditions, ‘which led her through
most of the vast Amazon basin, relying on local guides, surviving the hazards of canoe travel, the local food or lack of it, the often dangerous and always
troublesome insect life, and the occasional hostility towards a solitary white woman’ (ODNB). In the course of these expeditions she collected and drew
many species, often working under the auspices of São Paolo’s Instituto de Botânica, and her researches culminated in Flowers of the Brazilian Forest, the
first major publication of her Brazilian flower paintings and a botanical book of great importance. The magnificent colour plates were the result of
painstaking observation and meticulous attention to detail, and the scientific descriptions – which were supplemented by notes from Mee’s own travel
diaries – were written by the noted taxonomists Luiz Emygdio de Mello, Bassett Maguire, André Robyns, Richard S. Cowan, Lyman B. Smith, John J.
Wurdack, B.L. Burtt, David R. Hunt, Guido F.J. Pabst, and Raulino Reitz.

Flowers of the Brazilian Forest was conceived when Mee’s paintings attracted THREE NEW SPECIES IDENTIFIED
the attention of Sir George Taylor, the Director of the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew, after she had won the Royal Horticultural Society’s Grenfell
Medal in 1960. Mee left the Instituto de Botânica in 1965 and dedicated Most of the 500 copies available for sale were sold out in advance, and
much of the next two years to the production of the book, which was ready the critical response was equally positive. The historian of botanical art
for publication by the summer of 1967, and launched at the Tryon Gallery in Wilfrid Blunt wrote that, ‘[i]t is difficult to decide whether to be more
November 1967. As Sir George Taylor remarked in his preface, ‘special amazed by the intrepidity of Mrs Margaret Mee the explorer or the
scientific interest and importance attaches to certain of the plates, which beauty of her paintings [...]. The interior of Brazil is notoriously
portray species new to science, or are illustrated for the first time’; the three uncomfortable, and Mrs Margaret Mee [...] suffered from every
new species described and illustrated are the Catasetum meeae (no. 16, conceivable misfortune. She was plagued by ticks, viciously attacked
‘collected by Margaret Mee in the State of Amazonas, at the Içana River [in by hordes of large ants, and threatened by enormous black wasps. She
December 1964], and brought into cultivation at São Paolo where it flowered was impaled upon the spikes of a hostile palm tree. Huge hairy spiders
in July 1965’, and named for Mee by Pabst); the Spathiphyllum grazielae (no. chose her shoes to doss down in for the night. She had severe
31, collected in Paranapiacaba, São Paolo, in February 1967); and the sunstroke. That her canoe was constantly swamped as she fought the
Neoregelia margaretae (no. 25, collected by Mee by the Rio Içana in January rapids may be taken for granted. She starved; she was believed to be a
1965 and named for her by Smith). Ruth Stiff and Simon Mayo comment spy [...]. Then her drawings. These are splendid, magnificently
that, ‘during her journeys, Margaret Mee collected four of the five species of composed, superbly reproduced; they place Mrs Mee at once in the
Neoregalia known from Amazonian Brazil, and is credited with first discovering first rank of contemporary botanical artists. Indeed they could stand
three of them herself – N. margaretae, N. leviana, and N. meeana. Margaret's without shame in the high company of such masters of the past as
significant contribution to the knowledge of this genus helped establish her Georg Dionys Ehret and Redouté’ (Journal of the Royal Horticultural
reputation as both a scientist and a botanical explorer. As Neoregalia Society, vol. XCIII, pp. 307-308).
margaretae has not yet been recollected, it is known only from Margaret's E.J. Siriuba Stickel, Uma pequena biblioteca particular (São Paulo:
collections’ (M. Mee, Margaret Mee’s Amazon (Woodbridge and Kew: 2004), 2004), p. 361.
p. 302).
 index of women travellers & selected provenances

B eaufort, Emily—see Smythe G ilchrist, Jeanie 18 P eary—see Diebitsch-Peary

Bird, Isabella —see Bishop Gladstone of Hawarden, Lady Maud 38 Portland, William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck , Duke of 7
Bishop, Isabella 31, 39 Primrose, Bouverie 22
Brassey, Anna, Lady Brassey 37-38 H ahn-Hahn, Ida , Countess 20 Printzköld, Otto 16
Burton, Isabel, Lady Burton 9 Hobson, Anthony 3
Hogwood, Christopher 37 S anderson, Thomas, Baron 9
C airns, Hugh, Earl 21
Hosken, Ida and Frederick 15 Sheridan, Clare 13
Carless, Hugh 11 Smythe, Emily, Viscountess Strangford 7-8
Cobbold, Lady Evelyn Zainab 12 K ingsley, Mary 17 Stark, Freya 10-11
Culbertson, Rosamond 36 Strangford, Viscountess—see Smythe

L e Blond, Elizabeth 23
Swayne, Frances 19
D iebitsch-Peary, Josephine 26
Leeds, George Osborne, Duke of 4
Lindbergh, Anne 28
T aylor, Annie 32

E dwards, Amelia 14, 24

Lund, Katherine 29 Tully, Miss 5

Egerton, Harriet, Countess of Ellesmere 6 Lyall, Lady Cornelia 17

Enys, John Davies 1 V ictoria, Queen of Great Britain 21-22

M acCunn, Poldores 10 Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden 16

F arrer, Thomas, Baron 6 Main, Mrs—see Le Blond
Forbes, Adelaide 5 Manning, Ruth 35 W arren, Mary Bowers 27

Foster, Amy 33 Marsden, Kate 25 Wharncliffe, Edward Stuart-Wortley-MacKenzie, Earl of 3

Fox, Lady Dorothy 34 Martin, Annie 15
 index of regions & subjects

A frica 5 , 13-14, 16–19 D almatia 7 J amaica 38 S cotland 21-22

Albania 7 Dolomites 24 Japan 31 Siberia 25

Algeria 13, 27 Singapore 37

Alps 23 Somaliland 19
E gypt 14, 16 M edicine 1, 5, 25, 35
Angola 18 Spain 30
England 21, 27, 30 Mediterranean 6, 27, 30
Arabia 12 Sri Lanka 37
Missionaries 18, 32-33, 35 Sweden 20
Archaeology 14, 16
Montenegro 7
Arctic 26 F rance 27, 30 Switzerland 23, 27
Mountaineering 17, 21-24 Syria 9, 14
Aviation 28-29
Azores 38

G ermany 27 N atural History 17, 40 T ahiti 37

B ahamas 38
Greece 7-8 Tibet 32
Bermuda 38
Botany 40
Greenland 26 O ttoman Empire 1-9, 14 Turkey 1-5

Brazil 37, 40
Bulgaria 7-8 H awaii 37, 39
P alestine 6, 9
V enezuela 38

Holy Land 6, 9
Persia 10-11
C ar Touring 30
Z ambia 18
Ceylon 37
I ndia 35
R ussia 25 Zoology 17
Chile 37
Ireland 5, 21
China 32-34
Italy 24, 27
Cuba 36, 38
 BERNARD QUARITCH LTD

40 SOUTH AUDLEY STREET LONDON W 1 K 2 PR

www.quaritch.com

+44 (0)20 7297 4888 rarebooks@quaritch.com

The Armchair Traveller series

1. Africa 3. Australasia & The Pacific

2. Polar Exploration 4. Women Travellers