Year: 1854
Edition: Third edition
Publisher: Paris; Victor Lecou
Richly gilt and decorated cloth, 8vo., pp. 4, 164, endpapers and blanks plus 22 lithographs h.t. A simple undecorated spine. The boards richly decorated in gilt and with coloured onlays, depicting a rebab player both on the front – and the back board, all edges gilt.
The flat spine is without a title or any form of decoration. This binding is sometimes found containing the first edition of this book with the title on the spine, but occasionally it is found as well as the binding for ‘Souvenirs de l’Inde”. There are no auction records for a third edition in this binding and this copy has not been rebacked, so that we must assume that it was bound without a title on the spine.
The first edition of this work appeared in 1851. This 1854 edition is marked “Troisième édition”, leaving the impression that there should be a second edition. However, neither WordlCat nor auction records reveal a second edition. Possibly, but not corroborated by any evidence, a second edition was to be published by Garnier Frères. For the publication of Soltykoff’s “Voyages dans l’Inde” the two publishing firms collaborated closely (See under Bibliography) and possibly they intended to do the same with this publication.
All plates lithograhed by Trayer and printed by Plista and every plate protected by a tissue guard.
The captions of the plates read as follows:
Entrée de l’ambassade de Perse à Saint-Pétersbourg
Prince circassien
Environs de Vladikavkaze
Tiflis
Le monastère d’Etsch-Miadzine
Aux approches de Nakhitschevan
Danse nocturne à Miana
Aspect de l’Irac
Le bazar de Zendjan
Hadji-Mohammad à Saint-Pétersbourg
Femmes persanes
Le bazar de Gazbine
Arrivée à Téhéran
Téhéran
Nassr-Eddin-Mirza, héritier du trône
Le premier ministre sortant de chez le roi
Fiction (This plate not in the first edition)
Réalité (This plate not in the first edition)
Mirza-Naïbi-Saltana
Le roi allant se promener
Le roi de Perse, Mohamed-Schah
Retour de Téhéran à Saint-Pétersbourg
Some light foxing throughout.
Although first published only in 1851, This book deals with the time Prince Soltykoff spent in Persia in 1838 at the end of his diplomatic career.
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The plate above, titled “Fiction”, did not appear in the first edition of this work.
The plate above, titled “Réalité”, did not appear in the first edition of this work.
The binding described above was definitely not the standard binding for a third edition. Below the binding of a more common third edition which once belonged to James Fairfax.
Original publisher’s pebbled grain cloth, the spine with five gilt lined raised bands, gilt titles in the second compartment and the other compartments elaborately decorated in gilt. The boards stamped in blind, all edges gilt. The bookplate of James Fairfax on the ffep, extremities rubbed and with a 1 cm split of the frontboard at the tail of the spine.
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