Item #9314 Letters on Egypt ( 2 Volumes ); With a Parallel between the Manners of its ancient and modern inhabitants, the Present state, the Commerce, the Agriculture, and Government of that Country, and an Account of the Descent of St. Lewis at Damietta; extracted from Joinville, and Arabian authors. SAVARY Mr, Claude Etienne.

Letters on Egypt ( 2 Volumes ); With a Parallel between the Manners of its ancient and modern inhabitants, the Present state, the Commerce, the Agriculture, and Government of that Country, and an Account of the Descent of St. Lewis at Damietta; extracted from Joinville, and Arabian authors.

London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1786. First English language edition. Hardcover. Octavos. Two volumes (complete). xxiv + 568 pp & xxxvi + 596 pp. Contemporary full leather with elaborately tooled gilt decorations to spine, gilt fleurons around margins of boards, marbled endpapers, Two fold-out maps and one fold-out plan of the Great Pyramid in Vol. I. (possibly lacking a third map - though there is no sign of one ever having been bound in, and sources differ as to whether one is called for or not in this edition). Savary, an Arabic speaker, travelled in Egypt between 1776 to 1779, and is remembered as the first Frenchman to cite Arabic sources in his writings. His book became something of a 'Bible' for Europeans travelling in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, although some suggested bitterly he downplayed the harshness of the environment. Boards lightly chafed overall, spines rubbed with light bruising to ends, corners bumped and lightly rubbed, ownership signature - unmarked otherwise. Overall an attractively bound and internally fresh VG set. Genuinely scarce in this First English edition. Item #9314

Price: $750.00

See all items by ,