BURTON, Lady Isabel. The Inner Life Of Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land, from my private Journal. London, Henry S. King & Co., 1875.
8vo. 2 volumes. Original slate cloth, lettered and decorated in gilt, pp. [iii]-x, 376; [vi], 340, [4, advertisements]; each volume with Woodbury type portrait-frontispiece (without tissue guards), 2 colour-lithographic plates and 1 large folding map (repaired tear to fold), travel routes coloured by hand; cloth with a few expert repairs and and a little bumped, initial spotting to both volumes with contemporary stamps of St. Peter's College Glasgow to half-title and verso of one portrait, pencil shelfmarks; a good copy in the rarely seen publisher's binding.
First edition. Lady Isabel Burton, devoted wife of Sir Richard Francis, was encouraged to write by him, having gone to meet him at Damascus in 1869. She describes her impressions and experiences of Syria, the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, and in particular a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. 'Although she lived in Burton's literary shadow, referring to herself as "the mere bellows player to the organist", Isabel Burton was a good writer. Her Inner Life of Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land (2 vols., 1875) compares favourably with her husband's book about Syria, to which she also contributed ... Isabel Burton was noted for her concern for animals, of which she usually kept many. Her menagerie at Damascus was so varied that only with difficulty did she keep its members from devouring each other' (ODNB). - This copy lacked the half-title to volume one when it was accessioned by St. Peter's College, as the library stamp and annotations were put onto the verso of the portrait. There is no evidence of this half-title having ever been bound in.
Blackmer 246, 2nd edition only.
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