The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt & Nubia. From Drawings Made on the Spot … With Historical Descriptions, by the Revd. George Croly, LL.D. Lithographed by Louis Haghe; — Egypt & Nubia, from Drawings Made on the Spot … With Historical Descriptions by William Brockedon, F.R.S. Lithographed by Louis Haghe. London: F. G. Moon, 1842–49.
You can view our first edition of The Holy Land here.
Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior Specialist in Literature at Peter Harrington Rare Books.
2 works, together 6 volumes, large folio (60 x 46 cm). Contemporary red half morocco by Hayday & Co., spines richly gilt, matching morocco-grain cloth sides, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. Holy Land: 122 tinted lithographed plates (two vignette titles and 120 plates), uncoloured engraved map; Egypt: 124 tinted lithographed plates (three vignette titles and 121 plates), uncoloured engraved map; all plates in the scarcest format, finely coloured by hand, cut to the edge of the image and mounted on card in imitation of watercolours, as issued, mounted on guards throughout. Slight rippling to some of the plates, occasional light foxing to guards; overall an excellent set, the images clean and the delicate hand-colouring vivid and fresh.
First editions, the complete set in the preferred deluxe coloured format. “Roberts’s Holy Land was one of the most important and elaborate ventures of nineteenth-century publishing, and it was the apotheosis of the tinted lithograph” (Abbey Travel). No publication before this had presented so comprehensive a series of views of the monuments, landscape, and people of the Near East. The Holy Land was offered in three formats: single tint lithographs in paper wrappers; proofs in portfolios; and, the grandest and most expensive format, coloured and mounted in portfolios, as here, at twice the price of the cheapest format. The completion of the publishing project, Egypt and Nubia, was similarly published in three formats between 1846 and 1849, though this time the price of the deluxe coloured-and-mounted format was three times the price of the simplest format.
David Roberts, RA (1796–1864), enjoyed a wide popularity in his day for his European views, but his outstanding success was certainly The Holy Land, and it is on this that the modern appreciation of his work is based.
In August 1838 he arrived in Alexandria to start a carefully planned enterprise. It is claimed that he was the first European to have unlimited access to the mosques in Cairo, under the proviso that he did not commit desecration by using brushes made from hog’s bristle. Leaving Cairo, he sailed up the Nile to record the monuments represented in the Egypt & Nubia division of the work, travelling as far as Wadi Halfa and the Second Cataract. At the time of publication it was these views that excited the most widespread enthusiasm.
An exhibition of the original drawings was opened in London in 1840. They created a considerable stir and drew praise from Ruskin. The exhibition catalogue also served as a prospectus for the projected work, and was apparently very successful in bringing forward subscribers, without whom any work of this size would have been doomed. The work was subsequently published in a variety of smaller formats. In a dramatic gesture, the lithographic stones for the original large format work were broken at an auction of the remaining plates in December 1853 so that the originals could never be reproduced.
