Sketches between the Persian Gulf and Black Sea, Robert Clive. First Edition, London: Dickinson Bros, 1852.
You can view our first edition of Sketches here.
Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior Specialist in Literature at Peter Harrington Rare Books.
Large folio (552 x 417 mm). Contemporary olive-green morocco by J. Clarke (ink stamp on front free endpaper verso), spine richly gilt in compartments, red morocco double lettering-pieces, sides with decorative gilt frames enclosing central gilt arms of Algernon Percy, 4th Duke of Northumberland (1792–1865), wide gilt inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. Lithographic title and 24 tinted lithographed plates after Clive, one folding, 2 with 2 images, 6 leaves of letterpress printed on rectos only. Extremities rubbed, occasional foxing, but in much better condition than usually met with, overall an excellent copy.
First edition of this rare lithographic plate book, bound for Algernon Percy, 4th Duke of Northumberland, who as Lord Prudhoe, the second son of the second duke, had first travelled to Egypt and the Levant in 1826. In Cairo he met Edward William Lane, whose Arabic lexicon he subsequently sponsored, and other important Egyptologists, notably Jean-François Champollion. When he succeeded his brother as Duke of Northumberland, he maintained his particular interest in the Middle East alive by collecting antiquities, which later became the founding collection of the Oriental Museum at the University of Durham.
Rare. OCLC lists four copies in Britain institutional holdings: two at the BL, and one each at the National Art Library and the V&A; three in the US (Yale, University of Michigan, and Trinity University, Coates Library); and one in Australia, at the State Library of NSW. The American University of Beirut lists a copy under the variant title, A Series of Lithographic Drawings from Sketches: Comprising the Undermentioned Subjects, Lying Principally between the Persian Gulf & the Black Sea, which seems to be the same work. A note in a Sotheby’s catalogue suggests that the work appears also to have been published under the title Sketches of Nineveh and the Holy Land (ref. Sotheby’s sale, 13 October 1999, lot 256), but the work is not listed under that title in OCLC. We trace only four complete copies sold at auction going back to 1967.
The binder John Clarke was “one of the best and most prolific London binders of the period” (Ramsden), who was binding from about 1820 to 1859. He joined in partnership with Francis Bedford in 1841 and they worked together until 1859, from when Bedford worked on his own. Nothing is recorded of Clarke after this date.
The plates comprise: 1 Sculptures at Nimroud-Lions; 2 Moosul; 3 Hît; 4 Distant view of Mount Ararat; Arab encampment near the Birs Nimroud (2 on one sheet); 5 Sheikh Adi; 6 Baghdad; 7 Roman ruin on the way to Palmyra; 8 Sculptures in the Mount at Nimroud; 9 A night with the Nestorian patriarch in the village of Be-a-latha; 10 Ruined fortress of Hoschab; 11 Sculptures in the Mound at Nimroud; 12 Vignette of camels’ heads; Hussein, Sheikh of the Alouins; 13 Damascus; 14 Lake Van and town of Ardische; 15 Tank Kesra. Ctesiphon; 16 Town and fortress of Van. Armenia; 17 Leezan; 18 Amadia; 19 Julamerk; 20 Interior of the Koordish chief’s house in the village of Espinadar; 21 Palmyra (folding panorama); 22 Erzroom; 23 Sspian Dagh; 24 Kerbela.
