Souvenirs d'Orient. Constantinople, Grèce, Egypte,1831-1832-1833.

Paris.: Abel Ledoux.. 1833.. First edition, half-title, engraved frontispiece (spotted at margins), 481 pages and 'table des chapitres' on final leaf, 21.6 x 13.1 cm, occasional spotting and browning of text, two leaves with small marginal loss at the lower outer corner, contemporary calf-backed marbled boards, calf rubbed at the foot of the spine, but in very good unmarked condition. Text in French. First edition, with the fine frontispiece engraving of Constantinople by Friedrich Schroeder, one of the renowned engravers who participated in the team producing the illustrations for Antoine Ignace Melling's 'Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople et des rives du Bosphore'.

A lengthy critique in 'The Foreign Quarterly Review' in 1835, dismissed the well-placed Cornille's efforts (he had met Ibrahim Pacha on several occasions): 'His political bias makes him necessarily see every thing through a distorted medium', perhaps more mercifully the eminent scholar and bibliographer Angus O'Neill noted 'a routine travelogue by one who later describes himself as a Philhellene and predicts the fall of Islam.' (Koç 286a)

Remarkably scarce first edition, OCLC records only three library holdings worldwide, the last copy recorded for sale at Christie's in 2011.

Atabey 284; Blackmer 406.

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