[Rarebooks] fa: GEORGE BORROW - THE BIBLE IN SPAIN - 3 vols. 1843

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, March 31. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/y44v3eru

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


George Borrow: The Bible in Spain; or, The Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman, in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula. London: John Murray, 1843. The third edition, published the same year as the first. Three volumes, 8vo (20 cm), in early/period half calf and marbled boards.

A phenomenally popular work, "many people in that sanctimonious age buying the book under the impression that it was a religious tract." Far from being a pious work, Borrow's book is a classic of travel writing, with vivid descriptions of encounters with a wide range of colorful characters, and "so full of romantic adventure, it is obvious [it] cannot be entirely true. But Borrow was himself such a remarkable person that it would be difficult to be sure where truth ended and fiction began" (Kunitz and Haycraft). Bindings with some rubbing and edge-wear; light spotting to the front endpapers and title-pages, else clean and sound, firmly bound. Front paste-downs with the engraved armorial bookplates of Thomas Somers Cocks.