Narrative of a journey in the Morea
THE JACQUES LEVY COPY
London: A. & R. Spottiswoode for Longman, Hurst, Reese, Orme, and Brown; 1823. First edition.
Octavo (8 3/8” x 5 3/8”, 212mm x 136mm): binder’s blank, A4 (A4+π1) B-CC8 DD4 EE2, binder’s blank [$4 signed]. 211 leaves, pp. i-v (title, imprint, dedication, blank, preface) vi-ix [1] (blank), 1 2-411 [1] (imprint). With 9 lithographed plates, the first bound as a frontispiece.
Bound in contemporary polished calf with a double gilt fillet border surrounding a blind dotted toll border. On the spine, five raised bands. Author and title gilt to red calf in the second panel, with a guilloche pattern gilt to the panels. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards. Blind roll to the turn-ins. Marbled end-papers, with matching marbling to all edges of the text-block. Red silk marking ribbon.
Rubbed at the peripheries. The odd bit of soiling, but altogether an unusually handsomely-bound and well-preserved example of an uncommon book.
Sir William Gell (pron. “jel,” 1777–1836) was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and spent most of his post-graduate life abroad, first in Greece and, having been elected to the Society of Dilettanti and to the Royal Society, eventually joining the English colony at Naples. He was mocked for his passion for mapping — Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers writes “Of Dardan tours let Dilettanti tell,/ I leave topography to rapid Gell” (vs. 1033-1034) — and in the preface (p. v) Gell himself cites the same criticism. This attention to cartography distinguishes his travels through the Mediterranean (“Morea” being the Peloponnese, with Zakynthos, Cephalonia and Ithaca to the northwest) from those of other Englishmen. Gell’s careful draughtsmanship also provided the lithographs, which were T.M. Baynes and printed by Hullmandel.
Jacques Levy (1905–1980) was a steady collector of books from around 1940 until his death, with particular focus on travel and the East. Born in Istanbul, he spent most of his life in New York, where the Central Park West home he shared with his wife, the artist Margot Semac, was entirely subsumed by his book collection. The present volume was lot 334 in the Sotheby’s New York sale of his library, 20 April 2012.
Blackmer 665; Contominas 282; Droulia 434.
Item #JLR0837
Price: $2,500