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One of the great female travelogues of the eighteenth century, by the feisty Lady Craven, dramatist, writer, traveller and socialite, said to have been the first woman ever to have descended into the Grotto of Antiparos which is strikingly illustrated on one of the engraved plates. This vivid account of her travels through France, Austria, Poland, Russia, Turkey and Greece are presented in a series of letters to her future husband, the Margrave of Anspach. While in Constantinople, she stayed with the author and collector Choiseul-Gouffier and recounts details of her stay there: ‘the Comte de Choiseul’s collection is, perhaps, the only thing in the world of the kind, and he means, when he returns to Paris, to have all the ruins and temples executed in plaster of Paris, or some materials which will copy the marble, in small models; to be place in galleries upon tables’ (Letter XLVI). Her account is also particularly interesting for her commentary as to the behaviour and dress of the women in the different places she visits.

With a large folding map and six delightful plates depicting the source of the River Kaarasou in the Crimea, a Turkish boat, a Turkish burial ground, the Grotto of the Antiparos, Siphanto and the Convent of Panacrado from the Bay of Gabrio. Please note, this copy has a detached front cover.

Christopher, Prince of Portugal’s biographical portrait of his father, Antonio, Prior de Crato (1531-1595), illegitimate son of Prince Louis, Duke of Beja and claimant to the Portuguese throne. Antonio - who glories in such names as ‘The Determined’, ‘The Fighter’, ‘The Independentist’ and ‘The Resistant’ - was proclaimed King of Portugal on 19th July 1580 but was defeated on 25th August at the Battle of Ancântara by the armies of rival claimant Philip II of Spain, led by Fernando Álvarez de Toldedo, Duke of Alba. After his defeat, Antonio fled to the Azores where he minted coin, organised resistance to Philip’s rule and established an opposition government that lasted until 1783.
As a Knight of Malta, Antonio never married but is thought to have fathered ten illegitimate children. One of these, Christopher, author of the present work, was born in Tangier in April 1573. Always an ardent champion of his father’s claims, he continued to fight his father’s cause long after his death in 1595. This biography of his father contains several interesting documents relating to Dom Antonio’s applications for foreign help in fighting Philip II and regaining the throne, most notably to the court of Elizabeth I. This work is very much part of a political campaign: it contains a lengthy dedication to the young Louis XIII of France, discussing the role of his parents in Antonio’s struggle, and an Avertissement au lecteur in which Christopher makes a plea for French involvement, pointing out that the royal line of Portugal is in direct descent from the French royal family.

An epistolary account of Savary’s travels through Greece, translated into English here in the same year as the original French edition. Written in 42 letters addressed to Madame Le Monnier, Savary gives details on all aspects of modern Greece, from politics and the government of the different islands, to the customs of the natives of each island. He goes into particular detail on the islands of Crete and Rhodes. The work is accompanied by a map of ‘Part of Asia Minor and the Grecian Islands’ and a folding engraved plate depicting the ‘Plan of the Labyrinth of Cnossus from an Antique Gem’.

An important account of Italy written in a series of one hundred and fifteen letters. A good number of subjects is covered in the course of the letters, from economics, social institutions and local customs to the natural and artistic beauty of Italy. Beginning in the south of France and approaching Italy via Geneva, the author works down the country through Lucca, Pisa, Florence, Rome and Naples. Mercier Dupaty was an academician and magistrate, who was responsible for carrying the enlightened ideas of Voltaire and Beccaria into the courts and reforming the French legal system. This work enjoyed a significant popularity, was frequently reprinted and was translated into English in the same year.

An attractive copy of this fascinating political memoir in which the Hungarian born diplomat, François de Tott, explores the intricacies of eighteenth century Ottoman despotism from the viewpoint of Western diplomacy. A huge success at the time of publication, this eyewitness account fed the public’s insatiable fascination with the ‘Oriental other’ and challenged the insouciance of Western government. The memoirs follow the Turkish state’s metamorphosis from an agrarian society to a military power, a transformation overseen by Tott, who was highly involved in these military reforms.
A military engineer as well as a diplomat, Tott began writing his memoirs in 1767, the year he became the French consul to the Crimean Tatar Khan. Tott was the most influential of the many self-appointed Western ‘cultural mediators’ that flooded to Istanbul as part of the clan interventionniste in the late eighteenth century. Many Europeans acted as agents or double agents during the conflict, Tott included. His explicit mission was to relay information on the French Trading posts, whilst in secret his task was to encourage the Ottomans to go to war with Russia over Poland. It is clear that Tott felt a sympathy towards the Ottomans, so much so that Voltaire described him as the ‘protector of Moustapha and the Koran’. Nonetheless, Tott was popular among the French as his memoirs were both informative and very entertaining. He had initally travelled east to defend the Dardanelles but he remained to teach the Ottomans how to use artillery and his involvement was crucial in the country’s militarisation.
A nineteenth century biographer, J.C.F Hoefer credits him with ‘dispelling with exactitude, and often with impartiality, the European Myths of the Ottoman empire’. These memoirs were the first eye witness account to be published on the Ottomans, and the conflict over ideology and governance that Tott explores was not only fascinating to the French populus, but also contradictory to the staunch ‘studied ignorance’ of European government. At the time, William Pitt the Younger remained seemingly unbothered by the events of the Ottoman empire despite the despotism that had enveloped it, mainly because of the decline in the Levant trade and the pro-Russian party that resided there.
‘Tott abhorred what he described as the stupidity and cupidity of the Ottoman officer corps, and was contemputous of the quality of the rank and file... Tott’s Memoirs were a phenomenal success partly because such adventures suited the tasetes of a rapidly expanding reading public in Europe. They cap a century of fictional fascination with the East’ (Virginia Aksan, ‘Breaking the Spell of the Baron de Tott: Reframing the Question of Military Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1760-1830’, in The International History Reform, Vol. 24, no. 2, June 2002, pp. 253-277).
First published by the Robinsons in London in 1785 with a second London edition in the following year (see ESTC t121379 and t110203).

A scarce pirated edition of the Abbé Raynal’s popular work which ran to several editions in 1781, many of which bear the ‘Londres’ imprint. In the present case, the Londres imprint is probably false; ESTC suggests a French or Dutch printing.

First published in 1791, Volney’s Les Ruines, ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires was widely influential among radicals and free-thinkers in the Romantic period. Its influence spread from France and England to America where Thomas Jefferson translated the first part. This is one of the books that the monster from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein finds when he is hiding in the hovel. From it he learns the best and the worst of mankind: ‘These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? I head of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty; of rank, descent, and noble blood’.
Volney’s work was first published in English, by Johnson, in 1792. As noted in ESTC, this is not a reissue of the 1795 edition, despite the similar pagination: the press figure on p. 2 is 6, where that in the 1795 edition is 5.

A scarce French edition of this highly entertaining travel diary by the intrepid Lady Craven. Written as a series of letters to the Margrave of Ansbach-Bayreuth, who later became her husband, Craven’s lively account of a journey across much travelled Europe into less travelled eastern Europe and on into the Middle East brought her much acclaim as a pioneer among women travellers. ‘[Her travels] caused Lady Craven to encounter people she had never met, to discover landscapes she had never seen and landscapes she was not used to. The accounts she gives of her experience are a wealth of information on her general perception of the unknown and her personal evolution in the course of this journey’ (Palma). This edition is probably a pirated edition, published in the same year as the first French edition, but without the map or plates.
Bound after the Craven is a scarce guide to the Greek islands, attributed to Hendrik Frieseman, giving details on the population, principal towns, ports and monasteries and the chief trade or commodity of the islands. Geographical detail is also given, with a fairly subjective approach, hence Santorini: ‘Cette isle connue autrefois sous le nom de Thera & Calliste, c’est à-dire très-belle, ne mérite plus ce beau nom: elle n’est aujourd’hui autre chose qu’une carriere de pierre ponce. Ses côtes sont si affreuses, qu’on ne fait de quel côté les aborder; il y a toute apparence que ce font les tremblemens de terre qui les ont rendues inaccessibles. Son port ne pouroit être d’aucune utilité, n’ayant point de font du tout’.