Voyage dans la Cilicie et dans les Montagnes du Taurus exécuté pendant les années 1852-1853
Year: 1861
Edition: First edition
Publisher: Paris; Benjamin Duprat
Category: The Levant
8vo., pp. x, 478.
Original publisher's pebble grain cloth with blind stamped boards, the spine divided by four raised bands into five compartments with gilt titles in the second compartment. Vignette on title-page, several woodcuts in the text and a folding map plus seven lithographs, finely coloured by hand. All edges gilt.
Corners bumped, blind stamp on second ffep, two stamps on title page. All three stamps of the private collector J.M. Alingh, a 19th century Dutch writer from the city of Assen. No other marks. Light browning to part of the text pages and some very light foxing throughout.
In the same year as this edition another, far more common, yet rare edition was published by Duprat with a slightly different pagination {1} and containing 28 woodcut plates, of which some double-page. However, this copy, with its 7 exquisitely hand coloured lithographs and the many wood engravings in the text is complete as issued.
After his return from this expedition he first published the archaeological results in a separate work: "Rapport sur l'exploration archéologique de la Cilicie et de la Petite-Arméni, pendant les années 1852-1853", which appeared in 1854.
Victor Langlois was a French Armenologist who visited the region, then under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire, on several occasions. During the 19th century he was one of the few westerners to visit the Taurus Mountains. He published several books on Armenia and its history and translated several others.
A rare variant of this book with some splendid illustrations.
{1} Actually the pagination is the same, however, the pages 479 up till 484 contain the "Table des Matières" and the "Table et Classement des Planches". All copies with the seven hand coloured plates, including the Blackmer copy, that appeared on the market end at page 478.Blackmer sale 1309 (this edition), Atabey 666 & Chadenat 618 & Weber I, 587 (all three for the edition with the woodcut plates).
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