EDWARDES Major Herbert B. A Year On The Punjab Frontier, In 1848-49. London, Richard Bentley, 1851.
Two volumes, 8vo. Original cloth, spines lettered in gilt, ornamented in blind; pp. xi, 609; one frontispiece in chromolithography the other a steel-engraving, folding facsimile and two steel-engraved plates, steel-engraved folding panorama, and two further plates in chromolithography, two folding plans; volume I with restorations to spine, a little light wear and fading to cloth, remnants of 19th-century library labels to spines; both volumes initially a little browned and spotted due to offsetting from frontispieces, faint ownership inscriptions to title-pages, Petersfield working Men's Institute stamp to beginning of main text, engraved bookplates of George Head Head inside front covers; still a reasonable set, rarely found in the original publisher's binding.
First edition of Edwardes' account of the Punjab Rebellion of 1848, or, the second Anglo-Sikh War, which can be seen as a precursor of the Mutiny in the later 1850s. 'Edwardes raised, organized, and equipped a body of Pathan irregulars within a month of receiving news that the two British representatives, Patrick Alexander Vans Agnew and Lieutenant William Anderson, had been attacked at Multan in April 1848 by troops led by a rebel commander Godar Singh Mazhabi. The governor of Multan, Diwan Mulraj, was forced to lead the revolt which soon assumed serious proportions. Edwardes soon established contact with the Muslim nawab of Bahawalpur and Colonel van Cordtland, the officer commanding for the Sikh durbar at Lahore' (ODNB).
George Head Head was a mayor, magistrate, banker and mine owner in 19th-century Carlisle.
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