Fine Books and Manuscripts, Including Americana. Part 2

Roberts, David | First quarto edition of The Holy Land

Lot Closed

June 26, 07:20 PM GMT

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 USD

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Lot Details

Description

Roberts, David

The Holy Land: Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia. London: Day and Son, Lithographers to the Queen, 1855–6

Six volumes bound in three, 4to (292 x 203 mm). With 250 tinted lithograph plates including 6 title-pages with vignettes, 2 lithographed maps (Plates 125 and 212), frontispiece portrait of Roberts, 2 chromolithographs (Plates 213 and 240), and 239 additional views, each plate with accompanying descriptive text and list of subjects; intermittent foxing to plates, mainly marginal. Contemporary red pebble-grain half morocco over red textured cloth, gilt Jerusalem blazon with “Deus Vult” motto on boards, spineraised bands in six compartments, second and third gilt-lettered, all edges gilt; rebacked retaining original spine, covers lightly soiled, restoration to edges, endleaves reinforced.

First quarto edition of Roberts’s monumental visual record of the Middle East—described by Abbey as “the apotheosis of the tinted lithograph.” The original watercolors from Roberts’s 1838–39 journey to Egypt, Palestine, and surrounding regions were reduced photographically for this edition and lithographed by Louis Haghe under Roberts’s supervision. Issued in 1855–56 as a more accessible format following the success of the folio edition (1842–49), the quarto retained the complete plate suite and accompanying texts.

REFERENCES:

Abbey, Travel 388; Blackmer 1432; Ibrahim-Hilmy II, 177; Rohricht 1984

PROVENANCE:

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