At sea: 1835-1836.
Meeting "the Mary from New South Wales to Calcutta"
Journal kept by Captain J.T. Baldwin Madras Artillery during a voyage to India in the year 1835 [&] Original verses written on visiting home after a few years absence; Original verses on visiting Newgate after seven years Transportation;... More
Lisbon: Regia Officina Typographica, 1788.
Portuguese discoveries in a crisp uniform edition
24 volumes, duodecimo, with four portraits and five folding maps; contemporary blonde speckled calf. This extensive set is a fundamental travel book, and the basis for any history of Portuguese exploration. This is the first collected edition of... More
[Paris]: 28 October, 1825.
Cashmere fantasies: Bory de Saint-Vincent still scheming
Five-page autograph letter, folded to letter-size 224 x 171 mm., the sixth page blank; neatly written with some original scratching-out and corrections; secured together at the left margin;. A long letter from Bory de Saint-Vincent to an unknown correspondent... More
Tours: Alfred Mame et fils, 1893. Quarto, with many illustrations, some taken from photographs, gilt edges, in the original ornately pictorial cloth, with pretty decoration in silver and gilt. Fine copy of the first French edition, which puts the English edition of 1890 quite in the shade. It is scarce... More
Tours: Alfred Mame et fils, 1893. Quarto, with many illustrations, some taken from photographs, gilt edges, attractive in original ornate pictorial cloth. The splendid first French edition, which puts the English edition of 1890 quite in the shade. It is scarce - and is not in fact recorded by Ferguson... More
Milan: Ranieri Fanfani, 1825-1829.
Fine Americana in original wrappers
Eighteen small quarto volumes, with a total of 101 handcoloured plates and seven maps; an excellent set as issued in the publisher's tinted wrappers. Scarce in original condition: a record of Catholic missionary activity across the globe from the seventeenth to... More
London: Harris, 1821. Octavo with a folding frontispice map, 84 hand-coloured engravings on 28 plates (three on each); original printed boards. Second edition of this children's study of Asian lands. Each engraving is numbered and complimented by a corresponding description. The pictures and text cover a number of Asian countries... More
Lisbon: 1841.
Lucrative Spice Island possession
Pencil drawing measuring 204 x 260 mm. (sheet size), well preserved, mounted. Original mid-nineteenth century sketch of Banda, the fabulously lucrative and contested Spice island in present day Indonesia.Once the primary source of nutmeg and mace, the Banda islands were a prized Dutch possession... More
London: Sir Richard Phillips, 1823.
Passage to India & New South Wales aboard a transport
Octavo with an aquatint plate, old cloth. The only edition of this description of a visit to New South Wales in 1818 and one of surprisingly few accounts of a voyage on a convict transport... More
Amsterdam: circa 1680.
Tasman map by Blaeu's apprentice
Engraved map, 460 x 560 mm., superb handcolouring; mounted. Fine early map of the East Indies showing the discoveries of Tasman by Frederick de Wit, at a time when he was one of the foremost map-makers in Holland. His firm's 'maps were... More![De situ orbis habitabilis… [Antonii Bechariae veronensis prohemium…]. Periegetes DIONYSIOS.](/pictures/thumb/4109653.jpg?v=1477446129)
Venice: Francesco Renner de Heilbronn, 1478.
The earliest mention of China (here "Thina") in world literature
Small quarto (192 x 141 mm.), 36 leaves; roman letter with woodcut historiated initials, title printed in red & black; a very good copy in blindstamped calf antique. A highly influential early geographical text... More
London: T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1770-, 1772. Three volumes, quarto, folding map and eight plates (including frontispieces), a fine set in handsome contemporary gilt decorated calf, spine in raised bands with red and green morocco labels. A beautifully bound set of Dow's history of Bengal, illustrated with... More
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1812.
The tide changes in the East…
Octavo, original spine, label and diced boards; with errata bound in. Uncommon: reflections on the state of play by an East India Company agent.Published a year prior to the abolition of the Company monopoly on Indian... More
London: John Debrett, 1783. Octavo, 26pp, disbound. A printed letter critical of Thomas Townshend's involvement as Home Secretary in the affairs of the East India Company, published before the contentious resignation of Warren Hastings as Governor of Bengal. The letter was addressed by Lord Bellamont to the Earl of Shelburne... More
Nürnberg: Johann Andreæ Endter, 1668.
The exotic East and West Indies
Thick folio, engraved title, followed by title-page in red & black, envoi to German Emperor Leopold I with separate armorial frontispiece, 65 plates, with one textual illustration and the terminal Errata leaf; contemporary full pigskin with blind-embossed armorial stamps... More
Paris: Madame Veuve Hocquart, 1811-1814.
Acknowledging its debt to the Baudin publication
Two volumes, quarto, with 144 handcoloured plates; a very large copy, completely uncut, in a handsome contemporary binding of half crimson roan, flat spines banded and lettered in gilt. Lavishly illustrated study of the peoples of both old... More
Paris: Hachette, 1886. Two volumes, octavo, folding map; copy in later quarter calf. Includes accounts of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria. More
London: Oxford University Press, 1954. Small folio, illustrated throughout in colour on every page; original illustrated linen-backed boards. First edition of this charming autolithographed children's book, one of several done by Hutton including A Picture History of Britain / France / Canada / Italy / Australia / America / Russia... More
London: Richard Phillips, circa 1819.
From Mauritius to India via the North West Cape
Octavo, folding frontispiece map and three other plans and plates; recent half calf with gilt spine lettering, Uncommon: a rather interesting voyage to India via the Indian Ocean and Java by James Prior, an officer aboard... More
London: printed for J.Sewell; Vernor and Hood, and others, 1799-1812.
'Much more than the Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian world'
Eleven volumes, quarto, with a total of 132 plates (of which 24 are folding), some handcoloured; contemporary polished half calf with gilt spines. A splendid set in a handsome and well-preserved contemporary... More
Paris: Dabo and Masson, 1823.
Miniature voyage collection, with a Freycinet section
15 volumes, duodecimo, with numerous folding maps & plates; contemporary half calf. A delightful French miniature collection of voyages. There are three volumes each to the sections on Africa, Asia, America, Europe and the South Seas. This last... More
Amsterdam: L'honore & Fils. 1748. Two volumes in one, octavo, contemporary French calf gilt, flat spine gilt in compartments, spine with red morocco label and stamped 'JACOB' at foot. First edition of this important, controversial, and strangely prescient work, dedicated to Cyrano de Bergerac. By using the device of an... More
Venice: Gio. Giacomo Fuchs, 1818-1819.
The earliest scholarly edition of Marco Polo
Two volumes, quarto, with four folding maps; quarter vellum in antique style, original plain blue-grey wrappers bound in. The first "modern" edition of Marco Polo, the inspiration for all explorers towards the east. His reports of his travels... More![India Orientalis Christiana continens fundationes ecclesiarum, seriem episcoporum, missiones, schismata, persecutiones, reges, viros illustres [and two other works]. PAULINUS OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW, also called Johann Philipp Wesdin or Werdin.](/pictures/thumb/3703905.jpg?v=1434432225)
Rome: Typis Salomonianis, 1794.
Eighteenth-century India by a noted orientalist
Three works bound together, quarto, the first main work with folding map, 2 plates and an engraved portrait vignette, with two shorter pamphlets (24 & 26 pp.); an attractive copy in contemporary patterned vellum boards, spine banded, red morocco spine... More
Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1902. Quarto; profusely illustrated including eight tipped-in colour plates; original bevelled gilt boards. A lavishly-illustrated deluxe publication of the Danish artist Hugo V. Pedersen's sketch-journal of his five-year journey through the East Indies. Pedersen was born in Copenhagen in 1870, and trained as an artist in Denmark... More