Randolph, Bernard.

Estimate

3,000 - 4,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

The Present State of the Morea, called anciently Peloponnesus: together with a description of the city of Athens, islands of Zant, Strafades, and Serigo... third edition. London: Will. Notts [&c.], 1689, third edition, 2 large folding engraved maps (of Greece and Morea) and 3 folding plates (including panorama of the Seraglio), maps offset and torn (without loss), Greece backed, Greece and Seraglio plate misbound in following work

Ibid. The Present State of the Islands of the Archipelago (or Arches), Sea of Constantinople, and Gulph of Smyrna; with the islands of Candia, and Rhodes. Oxford: At the Theater, 1687, first edition, 3 folding engraved plates, P1 repaired at corner just touching a few letters

2 works in one volume, 4to (212 x 160mm.), nineteenth-century morocco gilt, gilt edges, some leaves spotted and/or browned, some repairs, joints rubbed

Provenance

Henry Blackmer, book label

Literature

Blackmer 1385, 1386; Contominas 600 (second edition), 601; Weber II, 388, 389; Wing R238, R234; Atabey 1012, 1013

Catalogue Note

"Randolph (bap. 1643 - d. after 1689?)... was living in Smyrna [by 1664] and he traded extensively through the Aegean region of the Ottoman empire until after 1680. Between 1683 and 1684 he travelled three times to Massachusetts to assist his elder brother Edward as deputy collector of customs. Back in England he published in 1686 The Present State of the Morea, a brief account of the port cities of the Peloponnese. A year later followed a longer, more anecdotal work, The Present State of the Islands in the Archipelago, in which Randolph interwove his own travels with descriptions of trading conditions and the conflict between Ottoman and Venetian rule in the lands around the Aegean" (Richard R. Johnson, ODNB).

These two works are often found together, and often the plates are misbound (as here) so that they face the relevant text.