Syria, the Holy Land, Asia Minor, &c. Illustrated. In a Series of Views Drawn from Nature...With Descriptions of the Plates by John Carne Esq. [from half-title: "Fisher's Views"]

London: Fisher, Son, & Co, [1837-1838]. First Editions. Three volumes; first or early printings, with half-titles dated 1837,1837, and 1838. Small quartos (27cm). Contemporary gilt-panelled calf, elaborately tooled borders, spines extra-gilt, gilt turn-ins; pale yellow coated endpapers; 80;76;100,[4]pp; engraved half-titles, 120 steel-engraved plates after W.H. Bartlett, William Purser, and Thomas Allom. Some professional restoration to bindings, including discreet tissue repairs to spine ends and hinges; scattered faint foxing and soil to text; marginal damp-spotting to about a dozen plates, slightly encroaching into image area on about half of those; a couple of tissue guards lacking; in all, a Very Good set, solid and generally clean within, in a rather lovely (but unsigned) contemporary binding. Early ownership signature (Mary Dunn) to all three volumes, dated 1863.

Carne (1789-1844) travelled throughout the Ottoman Empire in 1821, recounting his adventures in a series of articles in The New Monthly Magazine; these were later published in book form as Letters From the East (1830). Carne's biographer notes that the book is singular "for the fact that there is not a single date to be found in it, except the title-page." As a work of travel writing, the current title, though beautifully illustrated, is also rather on the impressionistic side - short on physical detail and rather over-written, perhaps bolstering the same biographer's backhanded observation that "Among those who knew him, [Carne's] fame as a story-teller far exceeded his renown as a writer" (DNB).