GUIZOT, François.
Bohn's Standard Library edition. 3 vols. 8vo. (18.5 x 11.5 cm). Publisher's original blind-stamped green cloth, the spines gilt-lettered, yellow endpapers printed with advertisements. Engraved portrait frontispiece to each volume. Ex libris the Maynard smith and Outram Smith Library, with their stamp to half-title and shelf numbers in white to spines. Rev. Herbert Maynard Smith (1869-1949) was a member of the Anglican clergy and a published author on theological and historical subjects as well as the writer of a series of detective novels. Rev. J. Outram Smith (1871-1954) followed his older brother into the clergy and maintained a special interest in missionary work. The following collection reflects their interests in theology, history, philosophy and literature as well as Worcester and the surrounding area. Many of the books include their circular ink stamp internally as well as numbering to spines. François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874) was a French historian, orator, and statesman. He was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848. During the First French Empire, Guizot, entirely devoted to literary pursuits, published a collection of French synonyms (1809), an essay on the fine arts (1811), and a translation of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, with additional notes, in 1812. These works recommended him to the notice of Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes, grand-master of the University of France, who selected Guizot for the chair of modern history at the Sorbonne in 1812.
OCKLEY, Simon.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo. (19 x 11.5 cm). pp.xxiv+[iv, chronological table]+391+[19, index]. Contemporary panelled calf, spine with raised bands and gilt-lettered red morocco label. The errata note crossed out in ink, and the previous owner has made the recommended corrections in the text. Previous (contemporary) owner's signature at head of title page, bookplate of Robert J. Hayhurst to flyleaf. Extremities of spine slightly chipped and rubbed, pages extremely crisp and clean. Generally an excellent copy. First edition of Ockley's ground-breaking history of the first three Rashidun Caliphs: Abu Bakr (r.632-34), Umar (r.634-44) and Uthman (r.644-56). It was the first English work on early Islamic history to make extensive use of texts by Muslim authors, and did much to transmit their learning to the reading public. Ockley began his research on the Arab conquests at Cambridge, working from late texts by Christian authors. The foundation for the present work, however, was laid at the Bodleian, where he spent two six week spells of intense study in August 1701 and April/May 1706. It was there, among the Islamic manuscripts, that he discovered earlier histories detailing periods sketchily covered in European sources. Later scholarship has proved some of the contributing manuscripts were not as early as Ockley had hoped, such as a copy of the Futuh al-Sham attributed to al-Waqidi (747-823), which, despite being dated 863, was actually copied around the time of the Crusades. Such mistakes were inevitable given the pioneering nature of Ockley's work and the Futuh al-Sham remained a significant find, providing an Arab perspective on the conquests of Syria and Persia. Ockley later wrote a second volume, published in 1718, continuing his account from the fourth Caliph, Ali (r.656-61), to the fifth Umayyad Caliph 'Abd al-Malik (r.685-705). Though he was in a debtors' prison at the time of its publication and passed away in 1720, the two volumes were highly influential. They helped to supersede the Medieval Christian view of Islamic history (and Islam more generally), and informed the work of historians such as Edward Gibbon, who recognised Ockley as "an original in every sense" (E. Gibbon, Autobiography, World's Classics, n.d., p.32, quoted in the ODNB).
SIDNEY, S.
Second edition. Large 4to. (27 x 21.5 cm). pp.x+608. Publisher's original decorative red cloth, a gilt vignette of an Arabian horse to upper cover, yellow-coated endpapers, all edges gilt. 25 colour-plates and numerous engraved illustrations, some of which are full-page. Cloth rubbed along extremities, spine a bit faded, inner hinge cracked but strong, contents clean, generally a very good copy. According to the preface: "This is a new edition, and something more. The first, issued in monthly parts, was completed in 1875. Ever since, the Author has been engaged in improving and revising it. The subjects have been re-arranged on a plan at once more practical and scientific."
GIBBON, Edward.
7 vols. 8vo. (19 x 13 cm). Title-pages printed in black and red. Contemporary half reddish-pink calf over cloth boards by Denny, spines with raised bands and gilt decoration, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt. Colour-printed folding maps. Some light fading and shelfwear visible along spines, contents clean and crisp, generally a very good copy. Gibbon's "masterpiece of historical penetration and literary style has remained one of the ageless historical works Gibbon brought a width of vision and a critical mastery of the available sources which have not been equaled to this day; and the result was clothed in inimitable prose" (PMM 222). "It is still entitled to be esteemed as the greatest historical work ever written" (Adams, Manual of Historical Literature, 146-7). Irish historian and classical Greek Scholar John Bagnell Bury was first the regius professor of Greek at Trinity College, Dublin, and later the regius professor of modern history at the University of Cambridge. "His historical work was mainly concerned with the later Roman empire, and his edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, with a masterly introduction and valuable notes, is the standard text of this history" (Britannica) and which "put at the reader's disposal the accessions to knowledge gained since Gibbon wrote" (DNB).
RAPKIN, J. & [TALLIS, John].
Original steel engraved map with vignette illustrations of Mount Sinai, a camel and Arab men and women. Decorative scrolling and title cartouche around the edges of the image. (Map 22 x 29.5 cm, overall sheet 27.5 x 36 cm). Original outline colour. An excellent copy. For the Great Exhibition in 1851 John Tallis (1817-1876) worked with engraver John Rapkin (1815-1876) to publish the 'Illustrated World Atlas', whose maps were later re-issued by the London Printing and Publishing Company. Their maps are prized for their steel-engraved vignettes showing the peoples, customs, architecture, landmarks, flora, and fauna of each country.
[ADMIRALTY CHART]. HELL, Anne Chrétien Louis de.
Original large sea chart of Corsica (51 x 70 cm) engraved by Davies & Company with "Large corrections Jany. 1893, Feb.1900" noted in lower plate mark. With four compasses roses, soundings marked in fathoms, some spots on the map marked in orange. Title in crayon to verso, small purple stamp reading "increase 50%" to upper margin, one horizontal fold as issued, generally a very good clean copy. Anne Chrétien Louis de Hell (1783-1864), a hydrographer in the French Navy active in the Mediterranean, was subsequently appointed Director of the École Navale de Brest, 1830 to 1835, and later Directeur du Dépôt des cartes et plans de la Marine. This map was first surveyed in 1824, the present example with corrections up until 1922.
KATZENSCHLÄGER, Michael & PEUCKER, Karl.
Original colour-lithographed map of Croatia and Slavonia (66.5 x 114.5 cm), folding between publisher's original cloth-backed card covers printed in black, publisher's advertisements to pastedown. Trivial nicks to where folds intersect with old reinforcements to verso, generally in excellent, bright condition. A highly detailed map of Croatia with explanatory key and 3 tables showing the judicial and political divisions according to the most up to date surveys in 1913, and the major cities along with details concerning their areas, population, and buildings. Scarce, OCLC returns just two copies, both in Germany.
THORNBURY, Walter (ed.)
4to. (22.5 x 16.5 cm). pp. xii + 308. Original chestnut brown cloth by Burn, covers lettered and decorated in gilt, sides ruled with foliate border, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, with brass clasp, brown dyed endpapers, all edges gilt. 20 full-page plates, including frontispiece after Henry Shaw F.S.A., pink ornamental borders throughout. Minor shelfwear to extremities, brass clasp missing from lower cover, some foxing to preliminaries and very occasionally throughout. Overall a good example.
PHILBY, H. St. John B.
FIRST EDITION THUS. 8vo. (21.5 x 13.5 cm). pp.198. Publisher's original red cloth, gilt-vignette to upper cover, spine lettered in gilt, in the original dust-jacket. 84 black & white photographic illustrations. Old inscription to flyleaf underneath which is written "Cairo. April '46 after visit to Jidda". Dust-jacket with some toning and minor losses along upper margin, small loss to corner of first plate (not affecting image), cloth still very bright and contents clean, a very good copy. A collection of essays written in the 1930s concerning the author's sojourn in Arabia. First trade and illustrated edition (first published in a limited edition of 350 copies in 1943 by the Golden Cockerell Press without photographic illustrations). "In this book Mr. Philby writes charmingly and with humour of his twenty years' residence in Arabia, of his travels, and of the people and their ways. Less detailed than The Empty Quarter or Sheba's Daughters, A Pilgrim in Arabia is no less intimate. There could be no better introduction to a great people and no better introduction to a region that is of supreme importance to the western nations, than this work by one of the foremost authorities of our time" (dust-jacket).
HALL, S.C.
Large 8vo. (26 x 19 cm). pp vii+[iii]+441. Contemporary full plum morocco, sides with multiple ruled borders and decorated in blind, spine with raised bands, gilt devices to compartments, the second lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, gauffered gilt edges. full-page decorative title, richly illustrated with decorative borders and vignettes throughout. Ink inscription to preliminaries, 'Philip G Earle'. Some rubbing to extremities, upper joint starting at head.
OSBORN, Robert Durie.
FIRST EDITION. PRESENTATION COPY. 8vo. (22 x 14.5 cm). pp.xii+414+[43, ads]. Publisher's original russet cloth, the sides stamped in blind and with central gilt device to upper cover, the spine lettered in gilt, brown coated endpapers. With a warm presentation from the author to English philosopher Shadworth Hodgson on the half-title reading, "S.H. Hodgson, from his very sincere friend, the Author". From the Rugby School Library, Hodgson Bequest. Cloth a bit dulled along spine, contents clean, generally an excellent association copy. Osborn had planned to write three volumes on the history of Islam, primarily for the benefit of young British officers stationed in Muslim countries. "I perceived, then, that to understand the events of Muhammadan history I must trace them upwards from their source, in the teaching of Muhammad at Mekka and Medina. I was encouraged to undertake this enquiry by the fact there does not exist any English book which treats of the growth of the Muhammadan religion. The present volume is the first fruits of this enquiry" (Preface). Robert Durie Osborn (1835-1889) was a lieutenant-colonel who served in India and Afghanistan for twenty five years. "Osborn was a serious thinker on both religious and political topics. As a young man he enjoyed the friendship of F. D. Maurice and of Charles Kingsley, and occasionally wrote papers in the magazines on Maurice's religious position and influence. While in India he studied oriental religions, and spent fourteen years on the complex materials for his two works, Islam under the Arabs (1876) and Islam under the Khalifs of Baghdad (1878), which were highly valued by serious students. Osborn was a zealous advocate of Indian rights, and his retirement from the army was largely due to his dissatisfaction with Lord Lytton's policy which, in his opinion, outraged Indian sentiment and needlessly provoked the Anglo-Afghan War of 1879. On his return from India he settled at Hampstead, and mainly devoted himself to journalistic and literary work" (ODNB).
The Aborigine's Committee of the Meeting for Sufferings (publisher).
FIRST EDITION. 8vo. (22 x 14 cm). pp.x+247. Publisher's original embossed black cloth professionally rebacked, spine lettered in gilt. 2 hand-coloured lithograhped maps, one entitled "Aboriginal America East of the Mississippi" serving as frontispiece, the other, larger folding map (49 x 55 cm), entitled "A Map of North America, denoting the boundaries of the Yearly Meetings of Friends and the locations of various Indian Tribes", which includes a useful key denoting Indigenous populations of the various tribes whose territories are depicted. Some light signs of shelfwear, contents clean, generally very good. An excellent precis of the history of the treatment of the Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River. In addition to the areas east of the Mississippi River, this volume republished the report of two Quakers, John Lang & Samuel Taylor, who traveled, in 1842, west of the Mississippi, visiting the Winnebago, Shawnees, Kickapoos, Delawares, Kansas, Osages, Cherokees and Choctaws.
BURKE, Edmund.
8vo. (21.5 x 13 cm). pp.xvi+342. Contemporary full mottled calf, sides ruled with intricate gilt borders enclosing floral devices, flat spine decorated in gilt and with black morocco label, gilt inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, sprinkled edges. Engraved portrait frontispiece of Burke. The Mount Stewart Library copy with engraved book-label of Mayor General Sir Charles Stewart, late 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, and that of his first wife Lady Catherine Bligh. Binding a bit rubbed mainly along spine and extremities, contents clean and crisp, a very good copy. Burke's celebrated treatise on aesthetics, originally published in 1757 (also by Dodsley), was the first complete philosophical exposition for separating the beautiful and the sublime into their own respective rational categories. It attracted the attention of prominent thinkers such as Denis Diderot, Samuel Johnson, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, who described Burke as "the foremost author" in "the empirical exposition of aesthetic judgments" (Writings and Speeches, 1.187-8). The work was fundamental to subsequent discourse about the sublime in Romantic literature and art, and exerted a strong influence on the Romantic and Gothic movements.
BURTON, Richard F.
FIRST EDITION. 3 vols. 8vo. (22 x 14 cm). pp. xiv+[ii]+388; title+iv+426; x+[ii]+448. Half title in vol. III only (as called for). Finely bound by Bayntun in half tan calf over matching cloth covered boards, spines richly gilt in compartments, red and black labels, top edges gilt, marbled endpapers. Complete with all 4 maps and plans, 5 colour lithographed plates, and 8 tinted lithograph plates. Ex libris Fredrici Gulielmi Cagle Natu Minor to front pastedown of each volume. A near fine clean set in a handsome binding. One of the most extraordinary travel narratives of the 19th century; it surpassed all preceding Western accounts of the holy cities of Islam, made Burton famous, and became a classic of travel literature, described by T. E. Lawrence as "a most remarkable work of the highest value". A formidable linguist, explorer, and storyteller, Burton spent decades traveling the British Empire. After years in India while stationed with the East India Company, Burton returned to England where he devised an audacious plan to undertake the sacred hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which was forbidden to non-Muslims. He approached the Royal Geographic Society, presenting the goal of his pilgrimage as the removal of "that opprobrium to modern adventure, the huge white blot which in our maps still notes the Eastern and the Central regions of Arabia." With support from the Royal Geographic Society, Burton left for Egypt in 1853. He spent time in Alexandria and Cairo where he perfected his Arabic as well as observing and embracing local customs and mannerisms to lessen the chance that his ruse would be discovered. Joining a caravan whose destination was Medina, Burton participated in the associated rites with the pilgrimage before returning to Egypt where he composed Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Mecca. His narrative is remarkable both for its detail of an unfamiliar region and culture for nineteenth-century audiences as well as Burton's reflections on his status as an interloper. For example, when he finally reached the Kaaba at the heart of the Great Mosque, Burton offers this confession: "I may truly say that, of all the worshippers who clung weeping to the curtain, or who pressed their beating hearts to the stone, none felt for the moment a deeper emotion than did the Haji from the far north. It was as if the poetical legends of the Arab spoke truth, and that the waving wings of angels, not the sweet breeze of morning, were agitating and swelling the black covering of the shrine. But, to confess humbling truth, theirs was the high feeling of religious enthusiasm, mine was the ecstasy of gratified pride."
Small 4to. (21 x 16 cm). pp.xvi+144. Title-page printed in black and red. Publisher's original black cloth, upper cover stamped in gilt with syrinx (pan flute) device, spine gilt-lettered, top edge dyed red. Old ownership inscription to flyleaf. Some faint shelfwear and light browning to endpapers, generally a very good copy. Theocritus, (born c. 300 BC, Syracuse, Sicily [Italy]died after 260 BC), Greek poet, the creator of pastoral poetry. His poems were termed eidyllia ("idylls"), a diminutive of eidos, which may mean "little poems."
Original full-page tinted lithograph (c. 44 x 61 cm). Roberts was the first independent, professional British artist to travel so extensively in the Near East. His tour in 1838-9 produced 272 sketches, a panorama of Cairo and three full sketchbooks, enough material to "serve me for the rest of my life" (Roberts, eastern journal, 28 Jan 1839). Over the next decade he made "a series of intire new drawings" for the large coloured lithographs executed by Louis Haghe for The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt & Nubia, which was originally published by subscription, 1842-9. No publication before this had presented so comprehensive a series of views of the monuments, landscape, and people of the Near East. "Robert's Holy Land was one of the most important and elaborate ventures of nineteenth-century publishing, and it was the apotheosis of the tinted lithograph" (Abbey, Travel). These lithographs were originally published in twenty parts, most parts containing six plates, the price for each part with coloured plates (the most expensive state) being 3 guineas. Yesterday and Today: Egypt, 21.