[Rarebooks] fa: MUNGO PARK - TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR DISTRICTS OF AFRICA 1799 (First ed./Complete)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, June 21. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/pfnb3b6

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

Mungo Park: Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa: Performed under the Direction and Patronage of the African Association, in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797. By Mungo Park, Surgeon. With an Appendix, containing Geographical Illustrations of Africa. By Major Rennell. London: Printed by W. Bulmer and Co. for the Author; and sold by G. and W. Nicol, Booksellers to his Majesty, Pall-Mall, 1799. FIRST EDITION; 4to (28 cm) in nineteenth-century pebbled cloth with morocco corners, sympathetically rebacked in modern goatskin, gilt-lettered spine label; xxviii, [2], 372, xcii pp.; with the half-title page, list of subscribers, postscript, and appendix;  frontispiece portrait plus 3 folding maps and charts (one outlined in color), 5 engraved plates (two of which are folding), 2 leaves of engraved music (complete). PMM 253; ESTC N13836.

The foundational work of African exploration and one of the most important travel books ever published, telling the epic and hair-raising story of Park's search for and exploration of the Niger River. “Until the publication of Park’s book in 1799 hardly anything was known of the interior of Africa, apart from the north-east region and coastal areas … Park’s Travels had an immediate success and was translated into most European languages. It has become a classic of travel literature, and its scientific observations on the botany and meteorology of the region, and on the social and domestic life of the Negroes, have remained of lasting value… He made the first great practical advance in the opening-up of Central Africa…" (Printing and the Mind of Man).

This copy has an interesting and rather fitting provenance: from the Oriental Club, with its bookplate on the front paste-down, ink stamps on the half-title, title and first leaf of the text (no other library markings). The Oriental Club was established in London in 1824 for "individuals of rank and talent connected with our Eastern empire." The Duke of Wellington was its first president. Some darkening to the edges of the text block and toning to the contents, generally modest, more pronounced in the earlier and later leaves; a few small spots and stains; light offsetting from and to the plates and maps; first folding map with a short tear at the top of the center fold, second folding map with tear in the upper margin; a few light (erasable) penciled marginalia by an early owner/Oriental Club member; otherwise clean and sound, firmly bound. The list of subscribers, which includes such worthies as Sir Joseph Banks, the Earl of Chesterfield, Sir William Howe, John Soane, and William Wilberforce, has had a name added to it ("Philips, Charles, Esq.") in ink by an early hand.