A Picturesque Tour along the Rivers Ganges and Jumna, in India...

First edition (iv, 191). Large quarto (35cm), with twenty-two (of the twenty-four) full-page aquatints, plus a similarly enhanced title page and tailpiece; the aquatints by Thomas Sutherland (ca. 1785- ca. 1825) and G. Hunt (fl. 1824- 1831) after drawings by Forrest; a large (35cm x 58cm) b&w folding map of the region signed [Samuel John]‘Neele, sc.’ (1758- 1824). Missing two plates (‘City of Moorshedabad’ @ p. 131 and ‘Tombs’ @ p. 159), absent any tissue guards, some offsetting, occasional light smudges in margins. Contents and images in particular are otherwise clean and bright. In fine modern binding by John Burbidge (CBBAG) -- three-quarter morocco over complimentary marbled paper, five raised bands, gilt titles in red and black panels to spine (rear endpaper replaced).

Forrest’s Picturesque Tour was intended as a companion to von Gerning’s Picturesque Tour of the Rhine (1820), and was ‘one of the first books of travel brought out by Ackermann’ (Hardie 109). The first 120 pages or so of the book are given over to a history of India which is followed by the illustrated tours of the Ganges and the Jumna. It was published by Ackermann in six monthly numbers; the NYPL has copies of the six parts in ‘the original illustrated light brown paper covers.’ Indexed in Abbey (441) and Tooley (227).       Other than the quite splendid Picturesque Tour, Charles Ramus Forrest (probably 1778- 1827)  left only a few traces behind. He has a way of making brief appearances when the writer is occupied with other subjects, and then the information isn’t as trustworthy as one would like. His d.o.b., for example, is given variously as 1750, 1778, and ca. 1787. 

It is known he served as a staff officer in the British army during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, notably on Pakenham’s staff at New Orleans (1814- 1815). Forrest’s journal from that time, held by the Clements Library at the University of Michigan, has been reprinted with an introduction and notes by Hugh F. Rankin (The Battle of New Orleans, a British View. The Journal of Major C. F. Forrest Asst. Quarter Master General, 34th Regiment of Foot. New Orleans: Hauser, 1961). An Ottawa Citizen article on the Dalhousie collection in the National Gallery, which includes twenty-nine Canadian views by Forrest, makes only passing reference to his Canadian service as aide-de-camp to the Governor-General. Depending on whom you would prefer to believe, Forrest was dismissed from Dalhousie’s staff either because the Governor-General, an early patron of the arts in Canada, found his work wanting or because Dalhousie’s sense of propriety was offended by Forrest’s liaison with a Quebec City woman. 

Ackermann’s Repository, 1824, announced that Lt. Colonel Forrest ‘is engaged on a Picturesque Tour through the Provinces of Lower and Upper Canada’ to be illustrated by coloured lithograph drawings, but that book did not appear. Perhaps, then, Forrest’s Canadian tour began and ended in Lower Canada. There is one recent record of the sale of a single plate (XIV, ‘City of Benares’) from Forrest’s India book at Christie’s London sale (April 2009). Ackermann produced some of the finest illustrated books of the first half of the nineteenth century; von Gerning’s Tour was Ackermann’s first ‘picturesque tour book’ and Forrest’s, four years later, the second published. Each was designed and produced to a high standard with the expectation a subscriber would have the six parts suitably bound. Our copy, newly bound in a fashion which would have been familiar to Ackermann’s clientele, is an especially handsome one. Includes a copy of Forrest’s Journal mentioned above.

The Seller added the following note of clarification - Tuesday, 12th July at 10.28 gmt

The book is not perfect, as I have noted. Two plates are missing and there is some light, but not in my view offensive off-setting, due probably to the missing tissue guards which were present originally.

The book has been listed for some time on ABE and Biblio as well as on our site. The original price was suggested by a well-known dealer in books on Indian subjects. The description was sufficiently detailed and discursive to achieve a reasonably good Google search result. As it has not sold at 9000 USD, I have decided to offer it on a cost- plus basis, as distinct from its perceived market price.

The book has a modern binding. It was disbound when I found it, and I had it rebound in a style consonant with that of the mid- 19th century. The book binding is by John Burbidge who has bound and repaired books for a number of Canadian booksellers.  (His picture appears on the home page of the Trillium web site.)

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