ROBERTS | The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt & Nubia, 1842-1849, subscribers' copy, coloured by hand

Property of a Distinguished Collector

ROBERTS, DAVID

The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt & Nubia. London: F.G. Moon, 1842-1849

FIRST EDITION, 6 volumes, folio (592 x 440mm.), 6 lithographed titles with pictorial vignettes and 241 lithographed plates, THE TITLES AND PLATES FINELY COLOURED BY HAND AND MOUNTED ON CARD, plain lithographed portrait of Roberts, 2 engraved maps, crushed red morocco gilt by Asprey, watered silk endpapers, gilt turn-ins, gilt edges, without list of subscribers and leaf containing list of subjects for Egypt vol. 3, portrait a bit spotted as always

A SPECTACULAR COPY, free of the spotting often found in the deluxe edition. Roberts's Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia, was one of the most elaborate ventures of nineteenth-century publishing, providing the most comprehensive series of views of the monuments, landscape, and people of the Near East. It is one of the greatest of all the colour plate books published in the nineteenth century.

LITERATURE:

Abbey, Travel 385, 272; Bobins I, 160; Tooley (1954) 401, 402