[Rarebooks] fa: OBSERVATIONS on the PASSAGE TO INDIA THROUGH EGYPT 1785 - James Capper - MAPS

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, February 28. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/y8vgg643

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


James Capper: Observations on the Passage to India, through Egypt. Also by Vienna through Constantinople to Aleppo, and from thence by Bagdad, and directly across the Great Desert, to Bassora. With Occasional Remarks on the adjacent Countries, An Account of the different Stages, And Sketches of the several Routes on four Copper Plates...The Third Edition, with Alterations and Additions. London: Printed for W. Faden, Geographer to the King, Charing Cross J. Robson, in New Bond Street; and R. Sewell, in Cornhill, MDCCLXXXV. [1785]. Octavo (23.5 cm) in later, but not recent, navy blue morocco and marbled boards, gilt-lettered spine label, page edges dyed blue; [8], xxxvi, 270, [18] pp.; with the supplement and terminal errata leaf (the latter not noted in ESTC), plus three engraved folding maps and one folding plate (complete). ESTC T105716.

This third edition contains an additional map and a plate not found in the earlier editions. Binding rubbed, with wear to the edges and extremities; contents mildly toned, a few spots and stains, occasional damp-staining and worming (mostly light and confined to the margins), some offsetting from the maps, closed tear and creasing to the inner edge of one map, small early tape repairs to the versos of two maps; early ownership signatures of T. J. Maslen[?], later gift inscription to front free-endpaper; otherwise clean and sound, firmly bound.

James Capper (1743-1825) was a meteorologist and officer of the East India Company serving on the coast of Coromandel. After returning to England, via Ceylon and Suez, in 1777, he was commissioned to explore the feasibility of opening a new route to India via the Red Sea, thus to foil those rival powers who seek "to tear from us, and divide between them,... our extensive and valuable possessions in the East Indies [which] have long excited the envy of all other European nations." Includes a 16-page "Supplement containing lists of the stages in the different routs from England to Bassora [Basra]." The section describing "A Journey from Constantinople to Aleppo" (pp. 67-158) is by George Baldwin.