A Journey into Greece, by George Wheler Esq; In Company of Dr Spon of Lyons. In Six Books. Containing I. A Voyage from Venice to Constantinople. II. An Account of Constantinople and the Adjacent Places. III. A Voyage through the Lesser Asia. IV. A Voyage from Zant through several Parts of Greece to Athens. V. An Account of Athens. VI. Several Journeys from Athens, into Attica, Corinth, Boeotia, &c. With variety of Sculptures. BOUND WITH The history of the city and state of Geneva, From its First Foundation to this present Time. Faithfully Collected from several Manuscripts of Jacobus Gothofredus, Monsieur Chorier, and Others. By Isaac Spon, doctor of physick, and one of the fellows of the colledge of Lyons. . .
Wheler, George, Sir. A Journey into Greece, by George Wheler Esq; In Company of Dr Spon of Lyons. In Six Books. Containing I. A Voyage from Venice to Constantinople. II. An Account of Constantinople and the Adjacent Places. III. A Voyage through the Lesser Asia. IV. A Voyage from Zant through several Parts of Greece to Athens. V. An Account of Athens. VI. Several Journeys from Athens, into Attica, Corinth, Bœotia, &c. With variety of Sculptures. London: William Cademann, Robert Kettlewell, and Awnsham Churchill; 1682. First edition.
bound with
Jacob Spon. The history of the city and state of Geneva, From its First Foundation to this present Time. Faithfully Collected from several Manuscripts of Jacobus Gothofredus, Monsieur Chorier, and Others. By Isaac Spon, doctor of physick, and one of the fellows of the colledge of Lyons. Licensed, Dec. 14. 1685. Ro. L’Estrange. London: Bernard White, 1687. First edition in English.
Pot folio in 4s (11 ½” x 7 1/16”, 292mm x 180mm): π1 A2 a-b2 B-L4 Aa-Ppp4 Qqq2; 2π2 2A2 2B-Kk4, binder’s blank [$2 signed; 2E2 signed “D2”]. 333 leaves (201, 132), pp. [14] (title, blank, 3pp. dedication, blank, 7pp. preface, errata) 1-80 177-483 [1] (blank) [=xiv, 388]; [8] (blank, engraved title, title, blank, 3pp. preface, approbation) 21-250 [6] (6pp. index). With many in-text engravings and illustrations plus 12 engraved plates in toto: Greece: a folding map, 4 full-page plates and 3 stub (i.e., less than full-height) plates; Geneva: 2 full-page plates (of which 1, the engraved title, is integral with the text), 1 folding plate and 1 stub plate.
Bound in contemporary sprinkled calf (re-backed). On the spine, six panels. Authors and title gilt to morocco in the second panel. Blind roll to the edges of the boards. Top edge of the text-block glazed black.
Re-backed, with the upper fore-corner of the front board and the lower fore-corner of the back board strengthened. Rubbed at the edges, with wear to the unrestored fore-corners. Spine-label partly perished. Free end-papers renewed. Tanned generally, particularly to the first leaf (which has been reinserted), and passages of foxing throughout. Qqq2 (the final leaf of Greece) repaired verso. An old repaired tear to 2M2. The large folding map (Greece) backed and repaired recto and verso. A handful of marginalia and corrections in an old hand (pp. 356, 462; a purchase code to the verso of the title-page of Geneva, pp. 27, 229). The engraved armorial bookplate of Walter Synnot Esq.r to the front paste-down, and the ex-libris of H. & W. Uellner above.
If the Renaissance was the result of the “rediscovery” of Latin and later Ancient Greek texts by Western Europe beginning in the XIVc, then we must have a term for the “rediscovery” of the physical remains — coins, architecture, inscriptions — of antiquity; the “material Renaissance?” Whereas most ancient texts have their earliest manuscript witnesses several centuries after their composition, archaeology provided a direct link to the ancient world, one unclouded by centuries of drowsy, lazy or stupid copyists. To hold in one’s hand a coin with the likeness of Alexander the Great, or to run one’s fingers over an inscription on the Acropolis is to travel momentarily to the ancient world. While earlier explorers such as Pierre Belon and Nicolas de Nicolay wrote of their travels in the mid-XVIc, Sir George Wheler (1651–1724) with his traveling companion Jacob Spon (1647–1685) were the first to write systematically, even scientifically, about what they found in Greece.
Wheler set out — pushing the Grand Tour into Greece and Turkey — with George Hickes, his tutor from Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1675. Wheler met Spon (here called Isaac; English sources also render his name as James or Jacques) in Venice in June and the two continued east to Constantinople and Turkey before heading back west through Greece into 1676. Spon was the superior archaeologist, Wheler rather more dilettantish, with a particular interest in botany; his specimens were greatly valued by Robert Morison and his pupil John Ray.
Returned to England, Wheler compiled his notes and drawings — Spon published his own account in 1678 (in French) — into the Journey into Greece, which for nearly a century served as the standard account in English of Greece and Asia Minor. Nothing escapes his ambit, whether the customs of modern people (including a very lively account of a wedding), the flora and fauna, ruins, inscriptions, coins, vases and so forth. Since Greece had been under Ottoman (or Venetian) rule for two centuries, Wheler — unlike many of his successors — treats Muslim monuments and customs with plain curiosity rather than with disdain as post-classical interventions.
The second work of the Sammelband, a similarly historicized account of Geneva, is connected through Dr. Spon, who turned his attentions to the Calvinist stronghold. Divided into three books — till the birth of Christ, through to 1536, to the present — the work has a lengthy appendix of ancient inscriptions, which ties it more neatly to Wheler’s Greece.
Sir Walter Synnot (1742–1821) was an Irish land-owner from Ballymoyer in Armagh (of which he would become High Sheriff, the sovereign’s judicial representative in a county). Ballymoyer House, which was demolished in the XXc, had an extensive library; Sir Walter’s armorial bookplate (Franks 28776; the three cygnets canting on his surname) also appears in a volume of travels at Eton College. The bookplate of H. and W. Uellner with its motto “lego, ergo sum” (I read, therefore I am) has appeared in the trade in many volumes related to Greece. Üllner (or Vellner) is a family with a connection to Düsseldorf, but the identity of the owners — presumably husband and wife — is unclear.
Greece: Blackmer 1786; ESTC R9388; Geneva: ESTC 12216.
Item #JLR0259
Price: $12,000