Himalayan Journals: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.

Londom: John Murray, 1854. Full Description:

HOOKER, Joseph Dalton. Himalayan Journals. Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc. Londom: John Murray, 1854.

First edition. Two octavo volumes (8 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches; 222 x 140 mm). xxvii, [1], 408, [32 ie 30 publisher's ads]; xii, 487, [1, colophon] pp. With two colored folding maps, thirteen color plates, one of which is folding, and including two frontispieces. Numerous illustrations in the text, six of which are full page but included in the pagination. Half-titles and errata slips in each volume. With publisher's 32-page catalogue dated January 1854 at end of Volume 1, but catalog is lacking one leaf (pg 13-14) and the bottom third of page 21-22. With dedication to Charles Darwin.

Publisher's original full brick cloth. Boards tooled in blind with a gilt central device on front boards. Stamped in blind on back boards. Spines stamped in blind and lettered in gilt Top edges dyed brown, others uncut. Brick red coated endpapers with printed publisher's ads. Volume one with back inner hinge cracked and some splitting to cloth on back outer hinge. Front inner hinge of volume II cracking. Spines a bit sunned, corners bumped. Some chipping and fraying to heads and tails of spines. A few plates with light dampstaining to margin, not affecting illustration. Still overall a very good copy.

J.D. Hooker was an "eminent botanist, explorer and mountaineer who had earlier been with Ross in the Antarctic, and was a close confidant of Charles Darwin, to whom this work is dedicated. He was the first naturalist to travel into the Sikkim Himalaya, through mostly unknown territory which had not been reached by an Englishman since Turner's mission to Tibet in 1789. He made the first near complete circuit of Kangchenjunga in 1848-50, and the first to describe it. The maps were made from his own surveys and the illustrations and views are from his own drawings." (Hindman)

Abbey Travel 502; DSB VI, 489; Neate H108 ("a classic of Himalayan travel and exploration"); Yakushi (1994) H399a.

HBS 69091.

$1,750.