Travelling in Europe after Napoleon, or Recent acquisitions section updated (April 28)

With temperatures of over 25 degrees Celcius during the Easter weekend, we of Antiquariaat FORUM are already very much in a summer mood. As summer means holidays and holidays mean travelling, we like to dedicate this newsletter to one of our dearest subjects: travel books. If this is not your favorite topic, please click here to go directly to the Recent acquisitions section of our website, where you can also find books on medicine, microscopy, tobacco, shell fossils, fencing and more!

If you do like to read about other people’s travel adventures, especially those that are a bit on the eccentric side, Michael Egerton’s Here and there over the water: being cullings in a trip to the Netherlands, will surely not disappoint. Published in London in 1825, it is a curious account of a trip to the southern part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, including a visit of the battlefield at Waterloo, where the author contemplates the ‘dreadful slaughter of that glorious day’, while the landscape he sees is “Calm and unruffl’d as a summer sea, while not a breath of wind flies o’ver its surface.” Those who are as well-read as the author will recognize the latter part of the sentence as a quote from Addison’s Cato. Those who are less erudite will have a hard time identifying the countless (and uncredited) quotations Egerton uses to embellish his own ironic prose. Most important, however, are the 28 beautiful aquatints after the original drawings by Egerton himself, which contain many interesting details on daily life in Belgium and travelling in the 1820’s. Click here for a full description.

Another British gentlemen that crossed the Channel for recreation, was William Dorset Fellowes (1769-1852). In 1817 he visited La Trappe Abbey in the northwest of France, resulting in a nicely illustrated book that he cheerfully dedicated to “all who love to unbend their minds from a critical attitude, and can lounge good-naturedly over leaves written by a traveller as idle and careless as themselves.” The author was the son of dr. William Fellowes, physician extraordinary to King George IV. His life is not very well documented, but he seems to have been quite a traveller. As a navy officer he survived the wreck of the ship he commanded, which brought about A narrative of the loss of his majesty's packet the Lady Hobart, published in 1803. Later on he held a position at court and in 1815, after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, he made a visit to Paris, of which he related in Paris: during the interesting month of July, 1815. What he did not mention is that he left his wife and children for a French woman he met during that interesting month. In our online inventory you can find a good copy of the fourth and best edition of his very informative , which is of additional value for its details regarding the Wars of La Vendée.

The final work we would like to highlight here is the account of Alberto La Marmora’s travels through Sardinia. Like Egerton and Fellowes, La Marmora, Count de Ferroro (1789-1863) was a contemporary of Napoleon, but he was much closer to the emperor as he was a general in his army. A few years after Bonaparte’s defeat he went to Sardinia and wrote a detailed and important work on the (natural) history, geography, population, administration, agriculture and industry of this island south of Corsica. We now offer a first edition, complete with the rare atlas, of this beautifully illustrated work.

Please visit the Recent acquisition section of our website where you can find these and 27 other titles, including a first edition of Anne Frank’s diary, a Brazilian nautical and maritime dictionary and manual, and a very interesting marine pilot guide. Enjoy exploring!