TRAVELS IN TARTARY, THIBET, AND CHINA DURING THE YEARS 1844-5-6

Beschreibung

Two volumes. Although the volumes are undated this is the second edition of the English translation by William Hazlitt (1811-1893), son of the English essayist and philosopher. 8vo (8 x 5.25); pp [4], viii, [9]-292, 4 (adverts) + x, [2 (blank)], [13]-304; frontispieces and additional engraved titlepages with numerous woodcut illustrations throughout and a folding map in vol. 1. Light tanning to pages. Publisher's original light brown cloth spines lettered and decorated in gilt, sides embossed in blind; orig yellow endpapers. Caps of spines worn and points of corner bumped on both vols. Second English edition recounting the famous journey of two Lazarist missionaries across China, Mongolia, and Tibet between 1844 and 1846 by two French Lazarists, Joseph Gabet (1808-1853), a fluent Chinese speaker who had been in Macao since 1835, and Évariste Régis Huc (1813-1860), who had arrived in Macao in 1839. Setting out from Peking, the missionaries travelled westwards through what is now Inner Mongolia and Gansu province before reaching Tibet: in the process Gabet and Huc may well have been the first Europeans since Thomas Manning in the first decade of the nineteenth century to enter the Tibetan holy city of Lhasa, which they did in January 1846. Huc's description of this journey, first published in French in 1850, remains a picturesque and valuable source for understanding nineteenth-century European attitudes to Tartar and Tibetan culture and customs. Huc's works are written in a lucid, spicy, picturesque style, securing for them an unusual degree of popularity, so much so, in fact, that Huc was suspected of sensationalizing his travels. Although a careful observer, he was by no means a practical geographer. The record of his travels lacks precise scientific data. The authenticity of Huc's journey was questioned by the Russian traveller, Nikolai Przhevalsky, but vindicated by others. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 19841

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