Antiquarian and Collectors’ Books

PRESENTATION COPY. – [Fanny PARKES.] Wanderings of a Pilgrim, in Search of the Picturesque, During Four-and-Twenty Years in the East; with Revelations of Life in the Zenana. London: Pelham Richardson, 1850. 2 vols., inscribed by Fanny Parkes in ink verso the front-free endpaper, large 8vo (271 x 189mm.) 50 lithographed plates, including 20 hand-coloured and a few heightened with gum arabic, also includes the folding ‘Elevation of the Himalaya Mountains’ in rear pocket. (Both frontispieces and titles detached, dedication with ‘Fanny Parks’ in later blue ink, spotting to uncoloured plates, small crease tears to the folding panorama, contents leaf with marginal chipping, occasional minor soiling.) Original blue cloth, pictorial gilt (lower cover of volume 1 detached, upper cover and spine of volume 2 detached, worn). Note: inscribed by the author ‘Colm Clarke, with the Pilgrim’s kind regards’. Fanny Parkes lived in India with her husband, Charles Crawford- a civil servant in the East India Company- for twenty-four years and she travelled extensively. She taught herself Urdu, Persian and Hindustani and this is a record of her interactions, especially in the Zenana- the private area of a household where only women were permitted. Provenance: Colm Clarke (ink inscribed to by Fanny Parkes).