Travels in Crete by Pashley, Robert - 1837

First edition. Two Volumes. Large Paper Copy. Printed at The Pitt Press by John W. Parker, Printer to the University. Cambridge. John Murray. London. 1837. Imperial Octavo. 180mm x 275mm. Half-title, title, xl, 321pp. 5 tissue guarded litho plates Louis Haghe after Antonio Schranz [plus one supplied in facsimile: Megalo Kastron], Coins of Knossos plate, large folding plate: Inscription at Plu Monasteri (2 short closed attachment tears, creased to edges), 31 wood engravings, each mounted within the volume as indexed; half-title, title, ix, (1), (1), 326, errata (1)pp. 4 tissue guarded litho plates Louis Haghe after Antonio Schranz. (Closed tear to margin of mount of Rhythimnon plate - plate unaffected). Large folding litho map of Crete, a little toned, 25 wood engravings, each mounted within the volume as indexed, three of which have a dedicated full page. Original embossed cloth boards, spine renewed in maroon cloth with gilt lettering at some point in the past, when the endpapers were also renewed. Edges of boards worn and chipped. Top edges gilt. Edges untrimmed and dusty. First gathering of Volume I loose from title to xiv, with upper hinge cracked, but still firm. Short closed tear to lower edge of half-title to volume I. Small marginal paper fault hole to I, 255/6, text unaffected. Four National Liberal Club stamps to margins of each volume (See below for Provenance). Text bright and crisp, with occasional dusty smudges or spots.

DEDICATION INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO THE HALF-TITLE VOLUME I:
'To Edward Pleydell-Bouverie.
Few words suffice to mark the gift I send: "An Author's offering to a dearest friend".
Temple. March 1837. R.P.'

Robert Pashley and Edward Pleydell-Bouverie both attended Trinity Cambridge. In 1837 Pashley and Pleydell-Bouverie were both admitted to the Inner Temple. Robert Pashley's two published works on Poor Law Reform, On Pauperism (1854), and Observations on the government bill for abolishing the Removal of the Poor (1854), were followed by the appointment of Edward Pleydell-Bouverie as President of The Poor Law Board in 1855. This important volume from the library of Edward Pleydell- Bouverie was donated to the National Liberal Club, established by William Ewart Gladstone in 1882.

ODNB
"Pashley, Robert (1805–1859), lawyer and traveller, was born at Hull, Yorkshire, on 4 September 1805, and was baptized at Sculcoates on 27 December 1805, the son of Robert Pashley, and his wife Sarah née Fisher. Educated at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, under a Mr Williams, he was admitted at Trinity College, Cambridge, on 3 May 1825, and was elected to a scholarship in 1828. He took a double first class in 1829, and was elected a fellow of Trinity in the following year. In 1832 he proceeded MA, and, as travelling fellow of Trinity, undertook in 1833 a tour in Greece, Asia Minor, and Crete. Through the influence of Sir Francis Beaufort, he received from the Admiralty a free passage in the vessels employed in the Mediterranean survey. On his way home he spent some time in Venetian archives preparing an appendix to his travels which appeared in 1837, in two volumes, as Travels in Crete. Contemporaries judged the work to be scholarly and attractively written, but unfortunately a great part of the impression, together with Pashley's library and collections of antiquities, was destroyed in the fire at the Temple in 1838. Pashley was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1825 and the Inner Temple in 1837. He was called to the bar in 1837 and obtained a large practice on the northern circuit. He acquired so great a reputation as a settlement lawyer, that the act for regulating appeals, which gave the court the power of amendment, was known as 'the act for the better suppression of Pashley'. In 1851 he became QC, and was elected a bencher of the Inner Temple. In 1852 he was an unsuccessful candidate for parliament both at York and at King's Lynn. He published works on pauperism in 1852 and 1854. To try to set the poor law on a more rational geographical footing, he advocated the removal of the law of settlement and the raising of two-thirds of the money needed by a national levy on property. From 1856 to his death he was assistant judge of the Middlesex sessions. He married at the British embassy in Berlin, (Anna Josephine) Marie (1832/3-1908), daughter of the baron Lauer Münchhofen. They had two daughters and a son Robert Edmund (1857–1878). Pashley died after a short illness, at his home, 16 Manchester Square, London, on 29 May 1859 and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery."

The Honourable Edward Pleydell-Bouverie, PC, FRS (1818-1889) British Liberal politician. A member of Lord Palmerston's first administration as Paymaster-General and Vice-President of the Board of Trade in 1855 and as President of the Poor Law Board between 1855 and 1858. Second son of the Third Earl of Radnor.

An "important work" (Blackmer 1263). Many copies were lost in the fire at the Temple, London, in 1838. Lowndes notes that the ordinary format edition was published at 2 guineas, and the imperial 8° edition at 4 guineas.