Cook's Tourists' Handbook. Holland, Belgium, the Rhine and Black Forest (1901)

Full-bound in flexible maroon morocco with rounded corners, gilt lettering to the upper board and spine, all edges gilt, advertisements on endpapers + [2] pp of advertisements + 6-fold railway map as frontispiece, title-page and vii other pp of prelims + 460 pp of text and index + [4] blank pp for memoranda + 50 pp of advertisements, including for Cook's, railways, shipping lines and hotels.

CONDITION. This copy is remarkably good, considering that it was used and dates back to 10 years before the sinking of the Titanic. The boards are only very lightly edge-rubbed. The gilding is well preserved, both on the upper panel and spine and on the page-edges. The binding has softened slightly. The endpapers and versos, as well as the title-page and the first 6 leaves and the first map are sunned. Light front and back binding cracks have been repaired. For the rest, the contents are complete - including fascinating maps of the Black Forest and the Rhine, and the plans - unmarked except for a pencil mark on one or two of the hotel advertisements, and otherwise undiscoloured.

This is a handsome copy of a book which cost three shillings and sixpence 117 years ago. Today's auction reserve seems a bargain for the maps alone (see images).