Home / Browse / Travel & Exploration / Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile,
BRUCE, James.
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile,
in the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773. In five volumes.
Publisher: Edinburgh, by J. Ruthven, for G. G. J. and J. Robinson, London, 1790
Stock code: 41296
Price: £7,500 Currency Conversion
First edition. "His long and energetic narrative … remains one of the great travel accounts of the eighteenth century" (ODNB). James Bruce of Kinnaird (1730-1794) was only the second European to visit the isolated mountain kingdom of Abyssinia since the 1630s, and his fame on his return rivalled that of Captain Cook and Joseph Banks, recently returned from the Pacific. But in London "his stories were regarded as being too fabulous to be true, and he found himself ridiculed by society, especially by Samuel Johnson who had translated the narrative of Jeronimo Lobo. A 1792 edition of Baron Munchausen was dedicated to him" (Howgego). A sceptical public had to wait sixteen years while William Logan and later Benjamin Latrobe edited Bruce's chaotic notes and journals. "In conformity with 18th-century conventions of travel writing, it is an 'immethodical miscellany', ranging from striking adventure stories, reported dialogues, and Shandean asides boasting of his success with African women, through a pedantic history of ancient Ethiopia (which occupies most of the first two volumes), to vivid sketches of contemporary Abyssinian life, politics, and natural history. It was immensely successful, most of the original edition being sold to retail booksellers within thirty-two hours, and was rapidly translated into French and German" (ODNB). The excellent plates, which are chiefly bound into the fifth volume separately titled "Select Specimens of Natural History, collected in Travels to discover the Source of the Nile, in Egypt, Arabia, Abyssinia, and Nubia", were based on the drawings of Bruce and his companion Luigi Balugani, and superbly engraved by Heath.
5 volumes. Contemporary diced calf, gilt twist panel to the boards, flat spines, titles gilt direct to spines, gilt banding forming compartments enclosing gilt roundel tools, edges sprinkled blue. Engraved title vignettes, headpiece of royal arms and supporters to the dedication, 54 engraved plates, 3 battle plans and 1 other plan, 4 leaves of Ethiopian dialects, and 3 folding maps. A few minor paper flaws and marginal tears, no loss of text, small piece missing with loss from the scaled border to one of the folding maps, a little rubbed with some minor staining to the boards, neatly rebacked with the original spines laid down, overall a clean and handsome set.
