60
could shake’ (I, pp. 1-2). The second journey was undertaken to visit German spas for her health, and also to visit Percy Bysshe Shelley’s grave in Rome during Holy Week, which she describes in the light of her interest in Catholicism (which had increased ‘despite her very English disdain for its superstitions and her good old Jacobin hatred of the priesthood’ (J. Moskal ‘Travel Writing’, in E. Schor (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley (Cambridge: 2003), p.252): ‘Besides all that Rome itself affords of delightful [sic] to the eye and imagination, I revisit it as the bourne of a pious pilgrimage. The treasures of my youth lie buried here’ (II, p. 225). The work is remarkable for the juxtaposition (and inseparability) of the private and the political, as Moskal notes: ‘Rambles comes to terms not only with Mary Shelley’s personal losses, but also with the political losses she shared with a generation of English liberals. Their hopes for greater enfranchisement of the middle and working classes had been raised by the French Revolution of 1789 with its cries of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” to be dashed by repeated blows: the violence of the Revolutionaries in the Reign of Terror in 1794; the shameless aggression of their successor, Napoleon, in conquering other nations in the name of the revolutionary “liberty”; the harsh repression by the wars’ victors, Britain and Austria, of any reforms associated with the French; and the slow pace of liberalism in Britain itself, which led to the Chartist workers’ movement in the 1840s. In Rambles, Mary Shelley keeps liberal hopes alive by proposing for them a more limited scope (and a more distant one) by directing attention to the nascent nationalist movement in Italy. She speaks for the Risorgimento (“resurgence”), Italy’s nationalist movement, and defends the rebellious Carbonari’ (p. 247). Indeed, the unstated purpose of the book’s publication was to raise money to fund the activities of the aristocratic Italian revolutionary and disciple of Mazzini, Ferdinando Luigi Gatteschi, who had been exiled to Paris, where Mary Shelley had met him in 1843 and become close to him. However, although Gatteschi received £60 from Rambles, he then attempted blackmail Mary Shelley by threatening to publish letters from her, and she was forced to enlist the assistance of a friend, who bribed the Paris police, who raided Gatteschi’s home, and seized and destroyed all his papers.
Ashley Library V, p. 43; Pine-Coffin 840/3; Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 244; Theakstone p. 245. ‘A MID-CENTURY CLASSIC ON NICARAGUA’
230. SQUIER, Ephraim George. Travels in Central America, Particularly in Nicaragua; with a Description of its Aboriginal Monuments, Scenery and People, their Languages, Institutions, Religion, &c. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1853.
£695 228 228. SHUTE, Nevil. On The Beach. Heinemann. 1957. 229 £298
8vo., original red cloth with dust wrapper designed by John Rowland; wrapper a little chipped and creased , otherwise a very good copy.
First edition of this classic post-apocalyptic novel, the basis for the Stanley Kramer film starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, with Fred Astaire appearing in his first dramatic role.
229. SPEKE, John Hanning. What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1864.
£2,500
8vo (214 x 135mm). Contemporary half red hard-grained morocco over red, grained cloth, spine gilt in compartments, gilt-lettered directly in one, marbled endpapers, all edges marbled; pp. i-x, [2 (section-title, verso blank)], [1]-372; woodcut frontispiece by J.W. Whymper after I.B. Zwecker with guard, one engraved folding map by W. & A.K. Johnstone after C.I. Cruttenden and Speke and one double-page engraved map by W. & A.K. Johnstone with route added by hand in red, retaining half-title; extremities very lightly rubbed, spine slightly faded, some variable, generally light spotting, title trimmed at foot affecting copyright statement, otherwise a very good copy; provenance: Sir Joseph Radcliffe, Bt (probably 2nd, 3rd or 4th baronet, 1799-1872, 1824-1908, and 1858-1949 respectively, bookplate on upper pastedown).
First edition. As Speke explains in the ‘Advertisement’ that prefaces the work, this is a ‘short connected history of my first two explorations in Africa’, and it recounts his ‘independent journey to and from the Victoria N’yanza, which is the great source or reservoir of the Nile’. Speke’s discovery of Lake Victoria was made on an expedition accompanying Richard F. Burton, who disputed Speke’s claim that the lake was the source of the Nile. Speke later revisited the area with James Grant and was able to show that his initial claim was justified, as was revealed in Speke’s previous work, the Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863).
Czech, African p. 151; Ibrahim-Hilmy II, p. 255.
8vo in 4s (240 x 148mm), 2 volumes. Original dark-green cloth, boards with greek-key-pattern borders blocked in blind, enclosing central blocks of quadrilobe palmettes, spines lettered in gilt and decorated in gilt and blind, lemon-yellow endpapers; pp. I: [2 (title, verso blank)], [v]-xxii, [2 (fly-title, verso blank)], [1]- 424; II: [2 (title, verso blank)], [i]-iv, [3]-452;
colour-printed lithographic
frontispieces and 4 colour-printed lithographic plates printed by Sarony and Major, one folding tinted lithographic plate by Charles Gildemeister after James McDonough, 14 lithographic plates, some tinted or printed in red and grey, 10 wood- engraved plates, 4 lithographic maps, 2 folding, wood-engraved illustrations and letterpress tables in the text; extremities very lightly rubbed and bumped, skilfully rebacked retaining original spines, occasional light spotting or marking, titles very lightly browned, small, skilfully-repaired tear on vol. I folding map and final l. II, 57/2, otherwise a very good, internally-clean set in the original cloth; provenance: J.R. McClean (?John Robinson McClean, MP, FRS, FRAS (1813-1873), early engraved booklabels on upper pastedowns; vide infra) — small traces of bookseller’s tickets on lower edges of upper pastedowns — Cavendish Rare Books, London (loosely-inserted bookseller’s card, erroneously describing this as ‘First edition’).
Second American edition, published under a revised title. Squier (1821- 1888) was born in Bethlehem, NY and initially pursued a career as a journalist, before becoming Clerk of the Ohio House of Representatives in 1847, where he undertook a study of the Mound Builders with Edwin Hamilton Davis, the results of which were published by the Smithsonian Institution. Through the efforts of the historian W.H. Prescott, Squier was appointed American chargé d’affaires to Central America in April 1849, and in this capacity he signed an agreement with Nicaragua for the American construction of an interoceanic canal, which never came to fruition. He spent much of the following years working in South and Central America and from 1863 to 1865 Squier was the United States Commissioner to Peru and in 1868 he was appointed Consul General of the Honduras in New York City. ‘The major results of his connection with Latin America were his published writings on the archaeological remains and the general conditions of the countries he visited. The best of these are Nicaragua; Its People, Scenery, Monuments, and the Proposed Interoceanic Canal (2 vols., 1852), The States of Central America (1858), and Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas (1877). He wrote a number of other volumes and many articles of value, chiefly upon archaeological and ethnological subjects. He was honored at home and abroad as one of the most distinguished Americanists of the nineteenth century, and is
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