[Rarebooks] fa: VOYAGE EN RETOUR DE L'INDE par L'EGYPTE ET LE GRAND DESERT Howel & Capper 1796

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, October 7. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/y7gnlu5l

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Thomas Howel; James Capper; Theophile Mandar (trans.): Voyage en retour de l'Inde, par terre, et par une route en partie inconnue jusqu'ici, par Thomas Howel; Suivi d'Observations sur le passage dans l'Inde par Eypte et le Grand Desert, par James Capper. Paris: l'Imprimerie de la Republique, An V [1796/7]. First French edition. Small 4to (25.5 cm) in early/period calf-backed boards, gilt-tooled spine; [6], xvi, 385, [1] pp.; with the half-title page, two folding engraved maps. Binding with wear and chipping to the edges and extremities; some offsetting from the maps to the text leaves opposite, occasional light browning and scattered spots, else clean and sound, securely bound.

First edition in French of Howel's Journal of the Passage from India, by a Route Partly Unfrequented through Armenia and Natolia, or Asia Minor (1789) and Capper's Observations on the Passage to India, through Egypt, and across the Great Desert (1783). The fact that these travel narratives of two intrepid Englishmen were translated by a member of the executive council of the French Republic, and published while the two nations were at war, is perhaps proof of a thirst for knowledge outweighing politics. But it's also a fact that these accounts of travels in Asia Minor and the Middle East would prove very useful in the planning of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt and the Levant in 1798.