Browse Similar Items
A RELATION OF SOME YEARES TRAVAILE, BEGUNNE ANNO 1626, INTO AFRIQUE AND THE GREATER ASIA, ESPECIALLY THE TERRITORIES OF THE PERSIAN MONARCHIE.
(London: printed by William Stansby, and Jacob Bloome, 1634). 290 x 195 mm. (11 1/2 x 7 3/4"). 6 p.l., 225, [15] pp. FIRST EDITION.
Contemporary sprinkled calf, raised bands, traces of old paper label to spine, pastedowns lifted to reveal leather bands and manuscript document fragments used as sewing guards, all edges sprinkled red (expert repair to rear joint). With additional engraved title page featuring two figures of Persian dignitaries and three small travel vignettes (signed at foot by William Marshall), and 36 engravings in the text, the majority vignettes, but one full-page and nine more than half a page tall. Front endpaper with ink armorial stamp of Sir Walter John Trevelyan, 8th Baronet of Nettlecombe and High Sheriff of Cornwall. Price inked in a contemporary hand to the front endpaper. Sabin 31471; STC 13190.3; ESTC S92948. Front board a bit splayed, covers with three old dampstains, and a few scars, and tiny wormholes, but a very pleasing original binding with almost no wear to the joints. A very few marginal smudges (made during printing?), other quite trivial imperfections, but AN ESPECIALLY FRESH, BRIGHT, AND CLEAN COPY INTERNALLY, with rich impressions of the engravings.
This is a contemporary copy in remarkably fresh internal condition of an important and entertaining account of the travels of a 17th century Englishman in exotic Asian and African territories, particularly Persia. It is significant both for the ways it is accurate and for the ways it is fictitious. Sir Thomas Herbert (1606-82) left for Persia on a diplomatic mission to Shah Abbas in 1626 as part of the entourage of Sir Dodmore Cotton. The mission was not successful: Cotton and the mission's other leader, Sir Robert Shirley, both died in 1628, leaving their retinue at loose ends with the increasingly unimpressed Shah. Herbert made a slow return to England, traveling through a large portion of Asia and Africa, and even sailing up the coast of North America. He finally returned to England in 1630; four years later he published this account of his adventures. The text describes meetings with people of many cultures as well as encounters with exotic animals including the dodo, flamingoes, and flying fish. Herbert's accounts are of great importance for their details of early Asian travel by Westerners. At the same time, the author was unable to resist the urge to embellish a good story, and according to DNB, gave implicitly first-person accounts of places he had not, in fact, visited. One such detour into the fanciful comes in the chapter involving the author's apparent visit to America. In it, Herbert discusses the belief that the mythical Welsh king Madoc ap Owen-Gwyned had settled in North America in the 9th century, for which he provides linguistic evidence that Sabin calls "entirely fanciful." DNB tells us that "this segment was apparently included to please the earl of Pembroke's own Welsh nationalist fancies. It also continued to help fuel various theories about Madoc's colonies and Welsh Indians in North America until the early years of the nineteenth century." Herbert's tale is profusely illustrated by William Marshall (fl. 1617-49) with engravings that are sometimes more imaginative than accurate (see, for example, the depiction of the shark on page 6, or the penguin on page 13). Despite these rather amusing inaccuracies, the illustrations are lively and detailed, providing a sense of the awe the early readers must have felt when imagining foreign places. Our copy, in a period binding with part of a manuscript ledger used in the binding process visible, is from the library of Walter John (1866-1933), 8th baronet Trevelyan, who (as his inkstamp suggests) served as High Sheriff of Cornwall from 1906-07. (ST20186)
Price: $4,500.00