Description
Travels To Discover The Source Of The Nile, in Five Volumes, by James Bruce of Kinnaird, published in Edinburgh in 1790.
Quarto, [5-volumes], [8], lxxxiii, [1], 535pp; [2], viii, 718; [2], viii, 759; [2], viii, 695; [4], xiv, 230, [10] pp. Rebound in modern quarter calf, marbled boards, title in gilt over red morocco on spine. Half title in each volume. Scattered foxing in all volumes, text generally clean. Complete with 58 copper engraved plates, and 3 large fold-out maps of Eastern Africa and Lake Tzana. Includes 5 title page vignettes and 4 pages of Ethiopian text in Volume I. Most plates with tissue cover, foxing to tissue cover, light foxing to most plates. Fold-out maps with light foxing and transference, archival tissue repair to map of Eastern Africa, solid hinges. (Blackmer, 221) (Nissen ZBI, 617) An attractive set.
Following the first English edition published the same year, this extra-illustrated edition of James Bruce’s Travels To Discover The Source Of The Nile is the more desirable edition. James Bruce (1730-1794) mounted an expedition to Africa in 1768 and offers eyewitness accounts of Ethiopian culture, descriptions of his travels in Eastern Africa and his quest to find the source of the Nile River. A “new edition” was published by Alexander Murray in 1813, who added appendices and substantial detail to Bruce’s account of the journey.
