Middle East: Léon de Laborde, Voyage en Orient, 1837-45

Middle East

Léon de Laborde,

Voyage en Orient, first edition, 77 lithographic plates, bound together from two simultaneously-published works: Voyage de la Syrie and Voyage de l’Asie Mineure, including: title page for Syria, 2 historiated woodcut initials within borders by Fragonard, and 157 views on 74 plates; depicting Beirut, Palmyra, Constantinople, Tiberias and Cyprus, by Letronne and Freeman after Laborde, Champmartin, Deroy and others; occasionally with colour, later tissue guards, this copy bound (as usual) without the text or second title, intermittent foxing, with plates varying between heavily spotted and clean, occasional staining, two plates with short tears, modern half morocco, rubbed to extremities, folio, Paris, Firmin Didot, 1837-45.

***Of the originally intended 180 plates, only 167 were eventually published. Subscribers were expected to have the works bound in two volumes, with the text issued lastly. It seems they often lost patience, as was the case with the King of Saxony.

Not in Blackmer or Atabey.