[Rarebooks] fa: TRAVELS OF SIR JOHN CHARDIN INTO PERSIA AND THE EAST INDIES - 1686

[ArCh]

Auction ends Sunday, November 19. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/mrsk4pr2

Many thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

John Chardin [aka Jean Chardin]: The Travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East-Indies, the First Volume, Containing the Author's Voyage from Paris to Ispahan. To which is added, the Coronation of this Present King of Persia, Solyman the Third. London: Printed for Moses Pitt in Duke-Street Westminster, 1686. First English edition. Folio (32.5 cm; 12 3/4 in.) in early/period calf, rebacked in later calf, gilt-lettered spine label; [14], 264, 331-417, [9], 154, [6] pp. (erratic pagination as issued). With engraved vignettes and capitals, plus 8 plates (only), three of which are folding. Wing C2043; ESTC R12885.

Text complete, but lacking several maps and plates. In addition to the eight plates that are present, there is a partial plate bearing an ink inscription on the verso by a very early owner: "This leafe tore thus at my receiving it— JC[?]." Rear board detached, front board nearly so; toning to the contents with occasional heavier browning, scattered spots and stains, last few leaves with some damp-staining and cockling, some creases to the plates from misfolding, else generally quite clean and sound. The plates include folding views of Irivan (present day Yerevan in Armenia) and Sultanie, and a depiction of a "Nuptiall Feast at Tifflis (Tbilisi)."

The first English-language edition of this work, published concurrently in France. Complete in itself, an additional three volumes were not published until 1711, in Amsterdam. Chardin (1643-1713) was a French jewelry merchant and traveler who spent nearly ten years, off and on, in Persia and the Near East, learning the Persian language, traveling extensively in the region, and becoming an intimate of the Safavid court. He was an eyewitness to the coronation of the penultimate Safavid shah, Safi II, later called Suleiman. Chardin's work was admired by such later writers as Gibbon, Montesquieu and Rousseau, and is still considered a remarkably accurate and fair-minded account of Persia for the period.