Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia and Palestine: in 1824, 1825, 1826 & 1827

London: Henry Colburn, 1829. First edition. Two octavo volumes (8 1/2 x 5 1/8 inches; 215 x 130 mm). xvi, 401, [1, errata], [2, blank]; viii, 398, [2, ads], [2, blank] pp. With half-title for volume I, but not volume II as usual. (According to Sotheby's, half-title called for in vol.2 by Blackmer, but probably in error). With 2 pages of publisher's ads at the end of volume II, but without the six pages of ads at the end of volume I. With full color frontispiece in volume I of "The Author in his Syrian Costume."

Bound by Clarke & Bedford in full tan calf. Boards double ruled in gilt with central armorial device. Spines elaborately stamped in gilt. Two green Morocco spine labels on each volume, lettered in gilt. Board edges gilt. Gilt dentelles. All edges marbled. Marbled endpapers. Some minor rubbing along hinges. Top of boards of volume II a bit sunned. Some foxing and toning. Still a very good copy.

"Madden writes in this epistolary work of harems, slave markets, religion, crime and punishment, politics, and numerous other subjects as well as medicine, and in his preface describes the difficulties encountered by a traveler to the East whose fate has been 'to have been taken for a spy in Syria, to have endangered my life in Candia, for refusing to administer poison, to have been shot at in Canea twice, and once on the Nile, by Turkish soldiers- to have been accused of changing the fragments of a broken statue into gold at Thebes- to have been charged with sorcery in Nubia... and to have been a captive with Greek pirates, for wearing a long beard, when taken in a vessel bearing Turkish property'" (Blackmer sale catalogue, 801).

HBS 68699.

$1,500.