Travel

Contact Jonathan Harrison, Alex Day or Andrea Mazzocchi

We stock Western books in European languages, generally – but not exclusively – published before circa 1850. We are especially interested in early travel accounts – from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries – in all areas beyond Europe.

Geographical regions in which we have tended to specialise include the Pacific and its surrounding countries – South America, the Northwest Coast of America, Japan, China, the maritime regions of Asia, including the Philippines and Indonesia, and Australia. Books on Africa, the polar regions, manuscripts and separately published maps are also handled.
  1. DENNYS, Nicholas Belfield, editor.

    The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. A complete guide to the open ports of those countries,...

    Shortrede and Co., 1867.

    First edition, complete with all twenty-nine maps and plans, of this remarkable guide to the open ports of China and Japan in the late 1860s, aimed at ‘travellers, merchants, and residents’, compiled by Nicholas Dennys (1839–1900), a noted scholar of Chinese folklore, with the sinologist William...

    £4750

  2. DEVILLE, Albéric.

    Voyage aux grottes d’Arcy, suivi de poésies fugitives et de pensées détachées. Par A. Deville, professeur...

    Paris, Munier for Gérard, an XI (1802-3).

    Scarce first edition, presented by the author, of this curious work comprising a description of the famous caves at Arcy-sur-Cure in France, alongside various poetical fancies, by the natural history professor and versifier Albéric Deville (1774–1832).

    £250

  3. DONALDSON, Florence.

    Lepcha Land or six Weeks in the Sikhim Himalayas ... With a Map showing Route, and 106 Illustrations. Photographs...

    London, Sampson Low Marston & Company, 1900.

    First edition of Florence Donaldson’s account of the Lepcha (or Rong) people of the Himalayan state of Sikkim in India, our copy from the library of the botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, the first European permitted to trek through Sikkim.

    £400

  4. DU HALDE, Jean-Baptiste.

    A Description of the Empire of China and Chinese-Tartary, together with the Kingdoms of Korea, and Tibet,...

    London, T. Gardner for Edward Cave, 1738 [–1741].

    The first complete English translation of Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s Description géographique … de l’Empire de la Chine (1735), the ‘Bible of European sinophilia’ (Löwendahl). Based on the reports of major Jesuit missionaries, and shaped by the earlier Historia of Martini and...

    £15000

  5. DUNMORE, Charles Adolphus Murray, Earl of.

    The Pamirs; being a Narrative of a Year’s Expedition on Horseback and on Foot...

    London, John Murray, ‘1893’ [1894]. 

    Second edition (first 1893) recounting the major 1892–3 expedition through the Himalayas and central Asia by the Earl of Dunmore.

    £275

  6. FINÉ, Oronce.

    Opere di Orontio Fineo … divise in cinque parti, arimetica, geometria, cosmografia, e orivoli, tradotte da Cosimo...

    Venice, Francesco Franceschi, 1587.

    First edition in Italian of the works of Oronce Finé, including the translations of his Protomathesis (1532) on arithmetic, geometry, cosmography, and sundials, and De speculo ustorio (1551) on burning mirrors, the only time all five texts appear together in any vernacular language.

    £2750

  7. FLEMING, Peter.

    Brazilian Adventure.

    London: Queen Anne Press, 2010.

    First edition thus, no. 120 of 150 copies. 'In April 1932 Fleming answered an advertisement in the agony column of The Times, which led him to take part in a crack-brained and amateurish expedition to the hinterland of Brazil, ostensibly to look for Colonel P.H. Fawcett, a missing explorer....

    £125

  8. FLEMING, Peter.

    News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir.

    London: Queen Anne Press, 2010.

    First edition thus, no. 120 of 150 copies. Fleming had first travelled to China in 1931 and returned in 1933 as the Special Correspondent of The Times, to cover the war between the nationalists and the communists; 'After reaching Mukden (Shenyang) in Manchuria and taking part in a sortie against...

    £125

  9. FLINDERS, Matthew.

    Narrative of his Voyage in the Schooner Francis: 1798. Preceded and followed by Notes … by Geoffrey Rawson...

    [London,] The Golden Cockerel Press, 1946.

    No. 327 of 750 copies, of which the first 100 were specially bound in full green morocco.

    £650

  10. ‘FLORENT DE SALES’, pseud.

    Vrai systême du monde physique et moral. 

    [Switzerland,] 1797.

    Only edition, rare, of this utopia, the identity of whose author, and even of whose printer, remains unknown.

    £1500

  11. FLOWER, Stanley Smyth.

    Album of 14 watercolours of India and Malaya.

    India and Malaya, October 1894 to August 1895.

    A charming album of vivid watercolour views of India and Malaysia, painted by a British zoologist and army officer during his time serving in India and the Straits Settlement.

    £750

  12. FORD, Richard (and Ian ROBERTSON, editor).

    A hand-book for travellers in Spain, and readers at home. Describing the...

    [Arundel and London,] Centaur Press, [1966].

    Richard Ford’s classic Hand-book for travellers in Spain, with an introduction by Ian Robertson and a revised index.

    £120

  13. GARCIA, Gregorio.

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

    Madrid, Francisco Martinez Abad, 1729.

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

    £1200

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

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

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

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

    £75

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

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

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

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

    £50000

  16. GUIGNES, Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de.

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

    Paris, l’Imprimerie Impériale, 1808.

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

    £6500

  17. HAKLUYT, Richard.

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

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

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

    £20000

  18. HAKLUYT, Richard.

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

    London, ‘George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, Deputies to Christopher Barker, Printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie’, 1589.

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

    £350000

  19. HANWAY, Jonas.

    An historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea, with a journal of travels from London through Russia...

    London, Dodsley, Nourse, Millar, Vaillant, & Patterson, Waugh, and Willock, 1753.

    First edition of Hanway’s narrative of his trade mission to Russia, Persia, and the Caspian Sea, with a contemporary bookplate bearing the names of the prominent Devon merchant and ship-owner Arthur Holdsworth and his wife.

    £1400

  20. HARDY, Campbell.

    Sporting Adventures in the New World; or, Days and Nights of Moose-Hunting in the Pine Forests of Acadia …

    London, Hurst and Blackett, 1855.

    First edition of this most interesting account of Nova Scotia, Canada, by the Royal Artillery officer Campbell Hardy (1831–1919).

    £575