[Sinai] Palestine and Syria; Handbook for Travellers

Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, Publisher, 1898. Cloth. Near Fine. Third Edition, revised and augmented (the Peninsula of Sinai is new to this edition). cxviii,472pp, profusely illustrated with 20 maps and 48 plans (many folding) and a panorama of Jerusalem. Publisher's red flexible cloth stamped in blind and gilt, all edges marbled, green silk page-maker. Near Fine, pages and plates supple though marginally toned, binding square and tight with bright gilt, maps properly folded and free of repairs, neat marginal notes in pencil to several sections, light stain to front paste-down. Provenance: Ink inscription, dated 1905, San Francisco, of Wallace Bradford to front fly-leaf. (Seven years later, Bradford witnessed the sinking of the Titanic from aboard the steamer Carpathia, and wrote a thrilling account of the rescue of 710 people early on the morning of April 15, 1912.) An unusually well-preserved copy. Hinrichsen E256. "The Romantic movement in Germany had given a new impetus to travel . . . In 1828 Baedeker bought the rights to J. A. Klein's Rheinreise von Mainz bis Köln and, after the death of the author, Baedeker himself revised and updated the work, recreating it for a new market. Using his own travel experiences he guided the tourist to the principal attractions in each place, saving travellers the expense of hiring their own guide. He thus created a new type of guidebook, which was widely copied throughout Europe and opened up tourism to a new class of visitor. The reliability of the information was ensured by annual journeys by Baedeker himself and by reference to respected published sources and expert scholars. . . . For the serious tourist a Baedeker was indispensable, its tone, especially with respect to southern Europeans, assuring northerners of their superiority, and suggesting ways of avoiding dangers. When Lucy Honeychurch finds herself ‘In Santa Croce with no Baedeker' in E. M. Forster's A Room with a View (1908) she is entirely lost." (ODNB) Note: With few exceptions (always noted), we only stock Baedekers in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene wrappers.