William Turner | Journal of a Tour in the Levant, London, 1820, 3 volumes, original boards

William Turner

Journal of a Tour in the Levant, in three volumes. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1820 

3 volumes, 8vo (230 x 140mm.), half titles, coloured frontispiece (volume one: travelling in Turkey; volume 2: Turkish drawings; volume 3: folding illustration of Smyrna), printed title, lists of plates and appendices in all volumes, volume one: preface and preliminary remarks, folding plain engraved map of the Greek Mediterranean; volume 2: folding Greek text at appendix; volume 3: addenda of Customs of the Turks, Arabs, and Greeks, index to all volumes, errata to all volumes, folding plain engraved map of the eastern Mediterranean; 23 plain and engraved coloured plates, some folding, in-text plain engravings throughout, original boards, edges uncut, some foxing and dampstaining, lower cover of volume 3 becoming loose, bindings rather rubbed

Turner spent five years in the Levant when he was attached to the British embassy in Constantinople. He visited most parts of the Ottoman dominions in mainland and insular Greece, as well as the Holy Land, Syria, Egypt and Cyprus. In the Addendum, he records local manners and customs. The plates and small engravings include views of local architecture, costume and geography, drawn by his friends, but wrongly attributed to Turner himself. 

PROVENANCE:

Murray 1820, manuscript note to all volumes