£605
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs | 725
Auction: 8 February 2023 at 10:00 GMT
Describing especially the two Famous Empires, the Persian, and Great Mogull. London: for Jacob Blome and Richard Bishop, 1638. Folio (29 x 18cm), contemporary calf, rebacked and relined, blind rules to covers, engraved additional title-page, engravings throughout the text, including zoological and ethnographic subjects, maps and views, a few old stains, occasional marginalia in ink or pencil, initial blank (A1) discarded, closed tears in C2, E4, Y1, 2D2, 2F4, 2X4, marginal tears in 2C4, spill-burn in 2F4, damp-staining to quire 2Y, final leaf (2B4, index) torn with loss of a few numbers recto, repairs in gutter verso [ESTC S119691; STC 13191]
Note:
Second edition, and the first under this title (the work was originally published in 1634 as A Description of the Persian Monarchy). Herbert travelled to Persia in 1627 as part of the disastrous embassy of Sir Dodmore Cotton, visiting 'the notable Persian cities of Gombroon [modern Bandar Abbas], Shiraz, Esfahan, Ashraf, Qazvin, and Qom as well as other Asian and African locales such as Surat, Mauritius, the Cape of Good Hope, and St Helena' (ODNB). Notably the work contains an extensive section on the Persian Gulf (pp. 109-119), containing descriptions of Muscat and Hormuz, and a vignette containing two coastal views.