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LETTERS ON INDIA
by GRAHAM, Maria:
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- See description
- Seller
-
Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown., 1814.. First edition. Octavo. Early twentieth-century maroon cloth with titles in gilt to the spine. Page edges untrimmed. Illustrated with a folding engraved map frontispiece and nine etched plates, one being a map, from drawings by the author. Errata page following the text at the rear. Previous owner's bookplate ("McClure / Inverness") to the front pastedown. A very good copy, the binding square and firm with just a touch of minor shelf wear to the extremities. The contents with toning to the endpapers, minor old neat paper repairs to the blank margins of five text pages, and some occasional light foxing (more so to some of the plates) are otherwise in very good order throughout. An attractive untrimmed copy. Maria Graham, later Lady Callcott (née Dundas; 1785-1842), was born into a Scottish naval family and spent much of her early life in the north-west of England whilst her father was stationed overseas, predominantly in the Caribbean. In 1808, at the age of 23, Maria accompanied her father to his new posting in Bombay. En-route she fell in love with a young naval officer, Thomas Graham, marrying him in India in 1809. Upon the couple's return to England in 1811, Graham published her first book, Journal of a Residence in India (1812), documenting her experiences of the country.
The present work, which Graham also illustrates, forms her second account of her travels in India, with a particular focus on its culture, customs and religion. Taking the form of a series of letters, she explains that the work was "written solely with the design of being useful to such as are called upon to go at an early period of life, to India, and cannot have had time to make themselves acquainted with even the general outline of the history, religion, or science of that country" (Preface).
A successful author and an accomplished illustrator, Graham went on to write a number of other travel works describing the periods that she spent living in Italy, Chile (where she arrived a widow, her husband having died en route, and subsequently lived alone for a year amongst the Chilean population), and Brazil (where she later returned to serve as tutor to the Brazilian princess). Notably, her account of the Valparaíso earthquake in Chile put her at the centre of a heated contemporary scientific debate, and led to her authoring the first paper written by a woman to be published in the Transactions of the Geological Society of London. She was also later commissioned by her publisher, John Murray, to write one of the best-known accounts of the famous voyage of the HMS Blonde to Hawai'i in 1825, as well as works on the history and art of Spain and her first, and most famous, children's book Little Arthur's History of England, which remained in print until 1975.
An uncommon title by this pioneering female traveller, author and artist.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Sky Duthie Rare Books
(GB)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 1171
- Title
- LETTERS ON INDIA
- Author
- GRAHAM, Maria:
- Book Condition
- Used
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.
- Date Published
- 1814.
- Keywords
- Travel & Exploration|Books By / About Women|Maps|History & Military
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About the Seller
Sky Duthie Rare Books
Biblio member since 2022
Sheffield, South Yorkshire
About Sky Duthie Rare Books
We carry a wide-ranging stock of fine and rare books, unique manuscripts, original artwork, photographs and ephemera. Placing a strong emphasis on the unusual and the visually stimulating, our areas of focus include travel and exploration; natural history; science and medicine; art and design; history; politics, philosophy and economics; literature and poetry; and children's and illustrated books.
Following a period in academia focusing on the history of ideas and after several years working for a prominent rare bookseller, the business was established in 2022 by Dr Sky Duthie.
Following a period in academia focusing on the history of ideas and after several years working for a prominent rare bookseller, the business was established in 2022 by Dr Sky Duthie.
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- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Errata
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- Cloth
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- Bookplate
- Highly sought after by some collectors, a book plate is an inscribed or decorative device that identifies the owner, or former...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Shelf Wear
- Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
- Octavo
- Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...
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