The History of China and India, Pictorial and Descriptive...
London. Dean & Co., ( 1846). Second Edition. Stock ID #224847 Finely bound copy of the second edition with a noteworthy colonial provenance. George Gough (1802-1889) served as a senior High Court Judge in Bengal under the East India Company. He was also the nephew of Field-Marshal Sir Hugh Gough, 1st Viscount Gough, who commanded British imperial forces in the First Opium War in China (1839–1842) and the First Anglo-Sikh War in India (1845–1846). When referring to this item please quote stockid 224847.
Tinted lithographic title, two folding maps of China and India, thirty-one tinted lithographic plates, numerous wood-engraved illustrations, iv, ii, iii, blank, iii, [i] Instructions to Binder, iv, iii, [i] Instructions to Binder, 393pp. 23.2 x 15.6cm. Scattered foxing and some offsetting to maps and text, a few leaves creased at the top corner. Armorial bookplate of George Gough (1802–1889) of Rathronan House (County Tipperary) and Woodstown (County Limerick), featuring a gryphon within a neoclassical oval frame. Finely bound in original calf, boards and spine elaborately decorated in gilt, gilt-lettered title label, all edges gilt, boards and fore-edges a little scuffed. A handsome copy in very good condition.
Lowendahl 978 (second edition), Bibliotheca Sinica 82.
Julia Corner, an "armchair voyager" of the British Empire, researched her popular history entirely within London libraries, using the primary journals of contemporary explorers, merchants, and East India Company personnel into a social history for Victorian readers.
"The 17 plates devoted to Chinese subjects were drawn by B. Clayton and G.F. Sargent after Fo Shang and others..." (Lowendahl) and the famed plate (from Staunton's "Embassy to China") showing the Emperor of China and his retinue receiving the British Ambassador, after William Alexander. The 14 India plates were drafted by prominent Victorian landscape artists and illustrators commissioned by publisher Dean & Co., including Thomas J. Rawlings, B. Solwyn, B. Clayton, J. Pollard, and G. F. Sargent.
Price: $850.00 AU