Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$384.26 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: xi + 452p : folded frontispiece, folded maps ; 28 cm. full leather binding with corners rubbed. staining to edges of endpapers.
Seller: Arthur Probsthain, London, United Kingdom
Price: US$1500.00 + shipping
Description: Quarto. ix (i), (1) 632pp., 8 plates, two of them double-paged, incl. frontispiece. Rebound in orange leather over marbled boards with gilt lettering and ruling on spine, raised bands. Frontispiece. Five plates in colored aquatints, three uncolored line-engravings. Contains various musical scores. "It will be noticed that Barrow, like William Alexander, was in the suite of the Earl of Macartney's embassy of 1792 to the Emperor of China. The expedition provided the material for a number of interesting works on China, of which the above book, and Alexander's "The Costume of China," 1805, are notable examples." (Abbey 531). Some foxing of first and last few pages of block, affected the uncolored line-engravings. Binding in overall very good+, interior in very good condition.
Seller: ERIC CHAIM KLINE, BOOKSELLER (ABAA ILAB), Santa Monica, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$1700.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Quarto. Bound in contemporary polished calf. Binding worn, restored, with boards rebacked. Marbled end sheets. x, 632 pages. Hand colored, aquatint portrait frontispiece, and 5 aquatint plates, 3 engraved plates (2 folding). Generally clean internally. Light, scattered spotting. Refs: Hill (2004) 62; Abbey, Travel 531; Tooley 84; Lowendahl 724; Lust 365. Barrow served as Lord Macartney's private secretary during the first attempt to establish a British embassy in China. Barrow's account was a significant as one of the first made by an Englishman of the Chinese Empire and its people. Armorial bookplate of Lord Berwick, Qui uti scit ei bona. Thomas Noel Hill, 2nd Baron Berwick (1770-1832).
Seller: Sequitur Books, Boonsboro, MD, U.S.A.
Price: US$1800.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Quarto. pp. ix, [3], 632, with 8 plates (including frontispiece), five of which are hand-colored. Recent full calf with new endpapers, original red spine label preserved, three armorial ink stamps on the top edge of the text block. Tissue repair to first page of table of contents, ocasional foxing and minor soiling in the margins; overall quite clean and sound. "Barrow accompanied Lord Macartney's mission to the court of China in 1792 as his private secretary, and the present account.is one of the best illustrated English travels on China. The eight plates are from drawings by William Alexander, who also accompanied the embassy and later published his own work. The strict exclusion of Europeans by the Chinese emperors had left China very much terra incognita to the western world well into the nineteenth century. Barrow was an excellent observer, and the text contains a number of descriptions and illustrations of Chinese artifacts and novelties. Among these are a plate depicting musical instruments, extensive renditions of Chinese melodies in western western notation, and a long description, with illustration, of an abacus" (Hill 62). Historian Michael Adas notes that Barrow "interspersed descriptions of his travels and personal experiences with lengthy discussions of varying aspects of Chinese culture.His judgments on the quality of Chinese life and material culture tended to be favorable at the beginning of his residence in China but grew more and more disparaging as time passed." Unlike Jesuit writers who praised the sophistication of Chinese science and culture, Barrow argued that a once-great civilization had been on the decline since the fifteenth century, providing "an implicit contrast between static, past-minded, backward China and the continually improving, foreward-looking, industrializing states of Europe (Adas, Machines as the Measure of Man pp 179-180). Cox I:346; Cordier 2388.
Seller: Walkabout Books, ABAA, Curtis, WA, U.S.A.
Price: US$1850.00 + shipping
Description: Complete two volume set in very good condition indeed. Rebound in attractive decorated half leather with five raised bands and two title labels on each spine. New endpapers. Complete with all fold out illustrations, maps. Volume 1 has a large folding map of the journey, hand coloured with one small closed tear along one crease. Volume 2 has six fold-out illustrations including maps of Knysna , Algoa Bay, Military Pan of the Cape Peninsula, Entrance into Cape Town from Green Point ( the frontispiece ), Plettenberg Bay, and Coast of Africa from Table Bay to Saldanha Bay. Minor light foxing only on some leaves and no damp, much better condition than normally found. A very pleasing set, which which will require extra for courier or postage if sent overseas. Paperback. No dj.
Seller: Treasure House Books, Franschhoek, WCAPE, South Africa
Price: US$3125.00 + shipping
Description: First edition, 4to, pp. ix, [3], 632; 3 engraved plates (2 double-p.), 5 hand-colored aquatints after William Alexander, a little light foxing to text and plain plates, frontispiece slightly offset; recent quarter brown calf over marbled boards, gilt-paneled spine and black morocco label; nice copy. "Barrow accompanied Lord Macartney's mission to the court of China in 1792 as his private secretary, and the present account of the country, accompanied by a number of fine plates, is one of the best illustrated English travels on China. The strict exclusion of Europeans by the Chinese Emperors had left China very much terra incognita to the western world well into the nineteenth century. Barrow was an excellent observer, and the text contains a number of descriptions of Chinese artifacts and novelties" (Hill, Collection of Pacific Voyages). Tooley 84; Hill 16; Lust 365; Cox I, 346; Abbey, Travel, 531; Cordier, Sinica, 2388-9.
Seller: Rulon-Miller Books (ABAA / ILAB), St. Paul, MN, U.S.A.
Price: US$3288.77 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: In-4° ; portrait front. coul.-IX-(1)-632 pp.-7 planches h.-t. dont 4 en coul. et 2 doubles. Demi-veau glacé à coins, dos lisse orné, titre or, tranches marbrées, rel. de l époque, bon exemplaire. Abbey, 531. Cordier, B. S., t. IV, 2388. Hill, 65. Lust, 365. Édition originale. FIRST EDITION. GOOD COPY.
Seller: LIBRAIRIE HÉRODOTE JEAN-LOUIS CECCARINI, Paris, France
Price: US$3778.55 + shipping
Description: First edition, with the second state frontispiece, of this highly influential account of the 1792 Macartney mission by his personal secretary. Interspersed with a meticulous day-by-day account of the mission are descriptions of artefacts, novelties, musical instruments, and the abacus. In the process, Barrow "established new standards for travel writing" (ODNB) Barrow (1764-1848) offers a more comprehensive and accurate record than that published in 1797 by Sir George Staunton, broadening European knowledge of Asia at a time when western politicians and merchants were increasingly looking eastwards. For Barrow, the embassy also marked the beginning of his meteoric rise. In the following decades, as second secretary to the Admiralty he presided over a formative period in British exploration, including the voyages of Richard and John Lander to discover the course and outlet of the Niger, as well as the arctic expeditions of John Ross, James Clark Ross, and Sir John Franklin. Bibliographers have not previously noted that, concerning the frontispiece portrait of Wang Wenxiong (a senior mandarin), two states of the plate variously give the artist either as Thomas Hickey (1741-1824), the mission's official artist, or William Alexander (1767-1816), its draughtsman. Although Alexander most likely executed the portrait, his share of the credit was, on paper, short-lived, as the plate was soon re-engraved with Hickey's name, and this second state was later used for the second edition (1806). This change might be attributed to professional jealousies and an inferiority complex: although Barrow credits Hickey with the portrait on page 184, he subsequently suggested that Hickey was strapped for work and hired out of sympathy rather than due to his talents. On the ground in China, Alexander outshone his more senior colleague, and while "there is some dispute over the amount of work Hickey achieved on the Embassy. even the most generous estimate of four pictures hardly suggests activity to match that of his junior draughtsman. According to the diarist Joseph Farington, a close friend of William Alexander and of Hickey's sculptor brother John, Thomas Hickey, unproductive himself, was jealous of the prodigious production of his junior" (Wood, p. 102). In 1805, a selection of Alexander's sketches and drawings was published as The Costume of China. "His meticulous, highly finished technique using pen, ink, and tinted wash is distinctive. [and] his engravings and soft ground etchings were much admired" (ODNB). Abbey 531; Bobins, The Exotic and the Beautiful 279; Cordier 2388-9; Getty, China on Paper 10; Hill 62; Howgego I B36; Löwendahl 724; Lust 365; Speake, pp. 75-76; Tooley 84. Frances Wood, "Closely Observed China: from William Alexander's Sketches to His Published Work", British Library Journal, vol. 24, no. 1, Spring 1998. Quarto (260 x 200 mm). Contemporary marbled calf, spine lettered in gilt on black label, raised bands, compartments with gilt foliate lozenges and dog-tooth rolls, boards bordered with stylized Greek key roll in gilt, board edges with diagonally hashed gilt fillet, turn-ins decoratively rolled in blind, marbled endpapers and edges, blue silk bookmarker. Hand-coloured aquatint and stipple frontispiece portrait of Van-ta-gin by Thomas Medland after Thomas Hickey, 4 hand-coloured plates (3 aquatint, 1 stipple) by Medland after William Alexander, 3 engravings (2 folding), illustrations of Chinese characters and musical notation in the text. Spine ends worn, gilt bright, front board with a little stripping at foot, patch of skinning on rear pastedown, 4A2 and 4A3 proud, frontispiece shaved at foot losing imprint, ZZ3 and ZZ4 sometime cropped at margin, text unaffected, plates bright with more pronounced foxing to uncoloured engravings: a very good copy presenting handsomely on the shelf.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom
Price: US$47250.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: THE LEVESON-GOWER-QUENTIN KEYNES COPY -- IN BOARDS -- EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED WITH FOUR WATER-COLORS BY (OR AFTER) SAMUEL DANIELL. London: C. and R. Baldwin, 1804. First edition, first issue. Quarto (11 1/8" x 8 3/4", 283mm x 223mm). [Full collation available.] Extra-illustrated with a folding engraved map (the "second, corrected edition" of "The Dutch Colony of the Cape of Good Hope" by William Faden after Louis Stanislas d'Arcy de la Rochette, dated 1795) and four bifolia mounted on bound-in stubs (see below). Bound in the publisher's blue drab boards backed in tape (re-backed, with the original back-strip and spine label ("PERCIVAL'S/ Cape of Good hope/[rule]/ 1804./ Price One Pound, boards.") laid down). Fore and lower edges untrimmed. Re-backed, with the original back-strip and spine label laid down. Some wear to the extremities, with bumps to the fore-corners. Quires b and Xx unopened. A splendidly intact copy. Ownership signature of John (or J.M.?) Leveson-Gower to the title-page. Engraved map (at a1-2) and four bifolia on stubs (at L4-M1, N3-4, N4-O1 and Y3-4) bound in, all extra. Robert Percival (1765-1826) sailed as a captain in the Irish infantry to retake the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch in 1795. From his triumphal entry into Cape Town in September of 1796 he remained in the region till 1797 before returning to Britain and preparing the present work, which is the first issue of the first edition (the distinguishing point being the typographical error in the head-line of p. 247: "OF GO ODHOPE." for "OF GOOD HOPE."). Unsurprisingly, the work is highly critical of the Dutch. Percival goes into great detail about their rough treatment of the locals. Broadly, the aim of the work is to describe the richness of the place, excoriate the Dutch and encourage the British to reclaim the territory fully -- which, in 1806, after the Napoleonic Wars upset the status quo established by the 1802 Treaty of Amiens, they did. The Leveson-Gower who signed the title-page as owner is likely General John Leveson-Gower (1774-1816), son of the famous Admiral of the same name who died in 1792. General Leveson-Gower served in the West Indies 1793-1796, and then sat as MP for Truro 1796-1802 before setting out in the Navy once more in 1807, where he was second-in-command to Whitelock in his unsuccessful expedition to Buenos Aires. The volume was then sold at Sotheby's London 19 November 1990, lot 246 (£5,200), to Quentin Keynes (1921-2003). Keynes -- great-grandson of Darwin, nephew of John Maynard Keynes -- was an explorer who traveled extensively in Africa. Keynes was also a noted bibliophile and collector, principally of this sort of material: XIXc travellers' accounts. The volume was purchased at his sale, Christie's London 7 April 2004, lot 343. For being an untrimmed example in the publisher's boards the present item is remarkable, but it is all the more so for the five extra illustrations bound in. The map, Faden's unfortunately-named "Dutch Colony of the cape of Good Hope" of 1795, is a good ancilla to the text. The four bifolia, however, are a much richer addition: "A Hottentot," "A Bosjeman in Armour," "A Kaffer Woman," and "Broad tailed Sheep of Southern Africa." The "Bosjeman" and "Kaffer Woman" have text opposite, directing the reader to "Barrows Cape of Good Hope." Each bifolium is a single sheet of wove pot (full sheets roughly 374mm x 232mm) drawing paper water-marked "J. Lloyd/ 1803". The text relates to either the first or second edition of Sir John Barrow's (first edition: An Account of) Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa. . . Two volumes. London: Cadell and Davies; first: 1801 and 1804; second: 1806. For the second edition, Barrow commissioned Samuel Daniell to do the illustrations; the first edition was unillustrated. After extensive analysis (PLEASE INQUIRE) we believe these to be original watercolors by one of the most admired illustrators of Africa, Samuel Daniell (1775-1811). Mendelssohn II p. 152.
Seller: Arader Books, New York, NY, U.S.A.