Search

First edition. Reports from Tonkin, Cochinchina (parts of modern Vietnam) and China by missionaries of the the Séminaire des Missions étrangères de Paris, whose directors were then in exile in London. These letters (all dated) are first hand accounts by the bishops and other missionaries in the Far Eastern provinces and include numerous descriptions of local religion and custom, as a well as (sometimes violent) measures taken by Westerners against them. Printer James Coghlan (?1731-1800), originally a book binder, became the pre-eminent Catholic printer, publisher and bookseller in London in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, having taken over the stock of Thomas Meighan in 1774. ESTC: Cornell only in North America. CCFr: Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris only.

First edition, by an officer of the East India Company, Newcastle printed, with a view of the Cape of Good Hope wood engraved by Thomas Bewick. The subscribers are predominantly from the maritime towns of the North East. Tattersfield, Bewick, TB 2.154; not in Jackson.

First edition of the official report of Curzon’s administration of Indian home affairs during his period as Viceroy. Curzon’s office was contentious and was concluded following a bitter feud with Kitchener. His belief in traditional sovereignty was frequently at odds with emergent Indian nationalism but many of his achievements have been long lasting, especially in the field of law, education and cultural heritage. Nearly 100 pages of the Home Department report are devoted to his judicial reforms with a further hundred concern policing and penal policies. His work reforming the University system is recounted in detail and there are interesting accounts of the merger between the Calcutta City Library and the Imperial Library to form what became the Indian National Library. Medical, sanitary and plague issues also occupy a full part.

This is one of several official reports on aspects of Curzon’s administration, subtitled: Public Works; Department of Commerce and Industry; Department of Revenue and Agriculture and Railway Board. All are very scarce. COPAC and OCLC between them list copies of the Home Department report at Bodley and Syracuse only.

First edition, dated Fort St George, 1 January 1775. A discussion of the Hindu practice of sati, when a widow immolates herself on her dead husband’s funeral pyre, something the poet had witnessed for himself. Born in Calcutta to Irish parents, Irwin served the East India Company in a civil capacity at Madras, before posting to China for two years and a return to England. Jackson, p. 43.

Scarce first edition of the author’s first publication, written from Fort St George, Madras. ‘The mount here celebrated, and of which an elegant engraving is prefixed to the poem, is situated nine miles to the south-west of Fort St. George, on the coast of Coromandel. The novelty of the prospect which it exhibits to a native of Europe, renders its subject extremely well adapted for poetical description; and justice obliges us to acknowledge, that this author has delineated the scene in lively and harmonious numbers... The production clearly evinces that the Muses can inspire their votaries even in the sultry plains of India’ (Critical Review).

Irwin (1751–1817), the East India Company’s superintendent in Madras, wrote a number of poems with an Indian flavour. Aubin, Topographical Poetry, p. 301 (who reproduces the plate here as a frontispiece to his own book); Jackson, p. 33.

First edition. ‘The Farewell (June), occasioned by Robert Clive's embarkation for India as newly appointed governor of Bengal, is a dialogue on patriotism between the poet and a friend’ (Oxford DNB).

First edition. ‘The Farewell (June), occasioned by Robert Clive's embarkation for India as newly appointed governor of Bengal, is a dialogue on patriotism between the poet and a friend’ (Oxford DNB).

First edition. A rare novel for young readers, in the form of a fairy tale set in India, with a full complement of the requisite genies and magical occurrences; a preface by the ‘translator’ explains the origins of the text and tells of its discovery in Delhi in an Arabic manuscript from the library of the Grand Mogul. Saurin (1706-1781) was a dramatist and poet with a particular interest in contemporary English writing; he published translations and imitations of Pope, Thomson, Lillo, etc. He was very friendly with Helvétius, who secured him a pension which enabled him to abandon law and dedicate himself to writing.

The novel appeared in English as Mirza and Fatima in the same year. Cioranescu 59517; Gay III, 240; Dufrenoy, L’Orient Romanesque en France 1704-1789, 181.

First edition of this Jesuit missionary Hindustani-Portuguese grammar, the former language rendered in arabic characters.