FIRST EDITION OF STEPHENS’ INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN EGYPT, ARABIA PATRÆA AND THE HOLY LAND, 1837, HANDSOMELY BOUND

STEPHENS, John L. Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Patræa and the Holy Land. New-York: Harper & Brothers, 1837. Two volumes. Octavo, modern full navy morocco, raised bands, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt.

First edition of this acclaimed 19th-century travel narrative about life and culture in the Middle East and Holy Land, with folding map of the areas visited and several full-page maps and plates depicting scenes from Stephens’ travels, handsomely bound.

Though the author, John Lloyd Stephens, began his career as a lawyer and went on to campaign for President Andrew Jackson, it was in travel writing where he made his greatest contributions. After the 1834 campaign, he came down with a severe throat infection and his doctor recommended that he head to Europe to recover. Stephens traveled throughout Europe and then went on to Russia, becoming the first American to visit Kiev before returning to Paris in 1835. “While waiting for a ship to the United States, he read Leon de Laborde’s Voyage de l’Arabie Petrée, published in 1830, which depicted the ruined cliff city of Petra in what is now Jordan. Inspired, Stephens changed his plans and journeyed up the Nile to Cairo and the pyramids, an established tourist route. However, Stephens left this beaten path to cross the Arabian Desert under the guidance of bedouins to Petraea and on to the Holy Land. In 1836, Stephens returned to New York via London, where he met the English architectural illustrator Frederick Catherwood. The American Monthly Magazine published four of Stephens’ travel letters in 1835 and 1836. On his return to the United States, Stephens wrote his first book, Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land, published in 1837. This book was an instant bestseller, and it established his reputation as the greatest travel writer of his day. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a long, enthusiastic review in the New York Review: ‘Mr. Stephens writes like a man of good sense and sound feeling.’ Herman Melville mentioned Stephens in his novel Redburn (1849): ‘I very well remembered staring at a man… who was pointed out to me by my aunt one Sunday in Church, as the person who had been in Stony Arabia, and passed through strange adventures there all of which with my own eyes I had read in the book which he wrote.’ Stephens’ popularity is attributed to his mix of erudition and a lively, personal style as well as the great public interest in travel writing” (ANB). With publisher’s advertisements.

Tear at stub of folding map, several isolated spots of soiling to text, binding fine. A near-fine copy, handsomely bound.