With the Author’s Journal of Travels from England through Russia into Persia: and Back through Russia, Germany and Holland. To which are added, the Revolutions of Persia During the Present Century, With the Particular History of the Great Usurper Nadir Kouli.

By Hanway, Jonas

London: T. Osborne et al, 1754 – Second Edition “revised and corrected”. Complete in two volumes. 4to – 27.9cm. Vol I: xxvii, [1], 460, [8]; Vol II: xx, 460, [20] pp. Illustrated with 28 copper-engraved plates, including 2 frontispieces, 9 maps, and 17 full-page plates (including 6 portraits), numerous engraved vignettes in the text. Bound in period style English half-polished calf and marbled boards, red and green morocco labels on spine with five raised bands and gilt tooling. Interior in very good condition with minimal intermittent foxing and edge damp staining to preliminaries in Vol. II. A very well preserved and complete set.

Includes a history of English commerce in the Caspian area from 1553 to 1743. Hanway was a partner in an English commercial firm in St. Petersburg; in representing the firm’s interests he traveled to Persia by way of the Caspian Sea in 1743-1746, reporting his own travels and quoting from others as well. The “Plain chart of the Caspian Sea” was presented to Hanway by John Elton and Thomas Woodroofe, both Englishmen who surveyed the sea in the early eighteenth century as part of the British trade in the area. The second volume concerns the revolutions of Persia, specifically: the reign of Shah Sultan Hussein; the invasion of the Afghans and the reigns of Sultan Mir Maghmud and his successor Sultan Ashreef; the history of the usurper Nadir Kouli (1687-1747); and the reign of his successor Adil Shah. Additionally, there is a chronology of the Persian monarchy from its first foundation.

—Goldsmith’s Library, 8901. Lowndes, 993. Cf. James Ford Bell Library Catalogue, H32; Nerhood 88.

$1800.00 -