[Rarebooks] fa: MUNGO PARK - TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR OF AFRICA 1799 + JOURNAL 1815 - First Editions

[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 again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


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; xxvii, 372, xcii, [6] pp. (bound without the half-title); with the list of subscribers, postscript, and appendix, frontispiece portrait plus 3 folding maps and charts (one outlined in color), 5 engraved plates (one folding), 2 leaves of engraved music (complete). PMM 253; ESTC N13836.

WITH:

Mungo Park: The Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa in the Year 1805... Together with Other Documents, Official and Private, relating to the Same Mission. To which is prefixed a Life of Mr. Park. London: Printed for John Murray, Albermarle-Street, by W. Bulmer and Co., Cleveland Row, St. James's, 1815. First edition; [10], 219, [1], cxxx, [2] pp.; with the appendices, terminal leaf of African Words, folding map.

Two volumes, first editions, 4to (26.5 cm), bound in uniform modern half calf over marbled boards, gilt-lettered spine titles, new end-papers. Travels with intermittent damp-staining, most prominently on the frontispiece, title-page and first thirty leaves, and again on the last ca. 50 leaves, including the music leaves; Journal with some lesser damp-staining affecting the first and last ten leaves or so; else clean and sound, firmly and handsomely bound.

First editions of these two foundational works of African exploration. Mungo Park's Travels, one of the most important travel books ever published, tells the epic and hair-raising story of his 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). The Journals describe Park's ill-fated return to Africa in 1805. Attempting to descend the Niger by canoe, he and his party were killed by indigenous locals near the Bussa Rapids in present-day Nigeria. Before departing on this last leg of his journey, Park had given his journals and letters to his Mandingo guide, Isaaco, to take back to Gambia for dispatch to England.