The Russian Shores of the Black Sea in the autumn of 1852. With a voyage down the Volga and a tour through the country of the Don Cossacks. Second edition, revised and enlarged

Edindurgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1853. Second edition. 8vo. pp. xiv, [ii], 380, 16 (publisher’s ads) + and tinted lithographic frontispiece and 2 b/w lithographed maps by W. and A.K. Johnston, the second of which (tracing the author’s route in red) is folding; numerous wood engraved b/w vignettes in the text. Spotting at intervals, folding map foxed and with short nicks and tears. Brown publisher’s cloth blocked in gilt and blind, with a vignette of a camel-drawn cart on the front cover, neat restoration to headcap; binder’s ticket of Edmonds and Remnants on lower pastedown as per Abbey. Oliphant’s ‘rambling and adventurous career’ (ODNB) has been the subject of several biographies. He trained as a lawyer, but became known as a traveller, diplomat, journalist and religious mystic. Travelling in Russia shortly before the Crimean War, he warned against ‘Russian aggression’, and by ‘passing as phlegmatic German peasants from some neighbouring colony’ was able to enter Sevastopol with a companion, and map the fortifications. Abbey, Travel, 233. Book