1844 The Highlands of Aethiopia

Description

Early Edition, Illustrated, Publishers' Original Binding

The scarce second edition of this work, viewed as superior to the first edition of the same year, with an added fifty-page introduction.

In this work, the author describes his journey as the first British Ambassador to the Christian Court of the Kingdom of Shoa in the highlands of Ethiopia, ruled at the time by Sahela Selassie. That mission paved the way for trade with this part of Africa, and ultimately for the British colonization of large territories of Africa, including Sudan.

Illustrated with a lithograph frontispiece and vignette title page to each volume - with volume III frontispiece hand coloured - and a folding map to volume I. With a chromolithographic dedication leaf to the first volume. Collated, complete.

With a single page of publisher's advertisements to the rear of volume II, and a thirty-two page publisher's catalogue to the rear of volume III.

With the bookplate of Anglo-Swiss financier Clinton E. Geiser to front pastedowns, and inscriptions to front free endpapers.

William Cornwallis Harris joined the East Indian Company as a second lieutenant at the age of sixteen, and served in India for much of his remaining career, save for the three-year mission to Ethiopia, narrated in the present work.