Home / Browse / Travel & Exploration / Indian Spices for English Tables;
ATKINSON, George Francklin, Capt.
Indian Spices for English Tables;
A Rare Relish of Fun from the Far East. Being the Adventures of "Our Special Correspondent" in India, illustrated in a SEries of Ine Hundred and Twenty Humorous Sketches, and exhibiting in all its Phases, the Peciliarity of Life in that Country.
First and only edition. Humorous sketches of a trip to India, from landing at Calcutta; travels by palanquin, kranchee and camel; a visit to the bazaar; the joys of the dak bungalow; sporting exploits, shooting tiger from an elephant, and pig-sticking, by the author-artist of Curry and Rice. Uncommon, COPAC has Oxford, Cambridge, NLS and BL only, last copy at auction over thirty years ago. Born in 1822, Atkinson entered the East India Company's army in 1841 and served in the Bengal Engineers from then until his death in 1859. From 1854 he was Executive Engineer for the Umballa Division, being responsible for the building of the Artillery Mess House, and also St. Paul's Church in Ambala, "an edifice which has been much admired (publisher's ad for Curry and Rice)," and which still stands. He was for a while the editor of The Delhi Sketch Book, "the Punch of North India," and was a contributor to the Illustrated London News, and the Leisure Hour. A highly desirable record of life under the Raj, a rarely-encountered work by one of its best known chroniclers.
Landscape folio (365 × 275 mm) Original red cloth-backed lithographed pictorial boards. Tinted lithographic title page, and 27 lithographed plates with vignetted sketches from line-drawings, and accompanying text. Somewhat rubbed and soiled, front hinge cracking and the decorative title coming loose as a consequence, front free endpaper creased, some light spotting and soiling, a few edge-splits and a couple of leaves reinforced verso, but remains very good.
