John Lewis [Johann Ludwig] Burckhardt. Travels in Nubia. Published by the Association for Promoting the Discover...

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Burckhardt's Posthumously-Published Chronicles

John Lewis [Johann Ludwig] Burckhardt. Travels in Nubia. Published by the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa. London: John Murray, 1819.

First edition. Quarto. xcii, 543 pages. Appendices. With two maps, one a folding map charting the course of the Nile. Lacks the second folding map, the half-title, and the advertisement leaf at the end.

Half-bound in modern polished calf over marbled paper boards. Leather title label to spine lettered in gilt. New endpapers. Occasional foxing throughout. Bookplate. Very good.

Johann Burckhardt (1784-1817), a Swiss orientalist and explorer of the Near East and of northeast Africa, crossed the Nubian Desert in his quest to discover the source of the River Niger, an expedition conducted under the patronage of the African Association. He traveled dressed in the garb of the native peoples, and his journey was filled with adventure and danger. Burckhardt died suddenly of dysentery in 1817, but as he had sent his journals back to England throughout his travels and had written many detailed letters, this posthumous work, compiled from his papers, was published with much of his travels fully chronicled. From the Professor John Ralph Willis Collection of Rare Africana.

Gay 1963.