PICTURESQUE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE DRESS AND MANNERS OF THE TURKS. Illustrated in sixty coloured engravings, with descriptions. de ( ALEXANDER, William ),: - 1814

London, printed for John Murray by W. Bulmer and Co., 1814.. SECOND EDITION 1814. Published in 1802 in a larger format. Small 4to, approximately 230 x 155 mm, 9 x 6 inches, 60 hand coloured plates (including frontispiece), by Artist: OCTAVIEN DALVIMART, each facing a page of descriptive text, bound in full burgundy straight grained morocco, ornate gilt border to covers with inner blind border, gilt raised bands to spine, richly gilt in compartments, gilt title, gilt patterned board edges and inner dentells (turn ins), all edges gilt, yellow endpapers. Slight rubbing to spine, yellow endpapers lightly dusty, occasional pale fox spot or faint browning to text pages, tiny pale mark to background of a couple of plates, faintest browning to white background of Plate 47, text leaf to that plate reinserted and very slightly dusty at top and fore-edge. A very good tight attractive copy. The plates show costumes and customs of the 18th century Ottoman Empire including Greeks, Albanians, Egyptians, Syrians, Tartars, etc plus eunuchs, odalisks, other women, servants, a musician, a Jew, dervishes, officers of the Janissaries, soldiers, a naval admiral, the grand vizier and a few tradesmen. First published in French and in English in 1802 as The Costumes of Turkey. Attributed to the French artist Octavien Dalvimart about whom little is known, in the Preface. It seems the text is by another, sometimes attributed to William Alexander, as one of the descriptions includes a comment made by Mons. Dalvimart. William Alexander (1767-1816) accompanied the Macartney Embassy to China in 1792 as draughtsman and in 1808 was appointed assistant keeper of antiquities in the British Museum. Rene Colas, Bibliography of Costume, 783; Hilaire and Meyer Hiler, Bibliography of Costume, page 16; J.R. Abbey Travel in Aquatint and Lithography, 1770-1860, Volume II, No. 370; R.V. Tooley, English Books with Colour Plates 1790-1860, page 300, No. 378. MORE IMAGES ATTACHED TO THIS LISTING, ALL ZOOMABLE. POSTAGE AT COST.