SOME YEARES TRAVELS INTO DIVERS PARTS OF AFRICA AND ASIA

Severally relating the Religion, Language, Qualities, Customs, Habit descent, fashions, and other Observations touching them.

With a revival of the first discoverer of America.

Revised and enlarged by the author.

Second edition: x, 364 + xiv pages index, additional engraved pictorial title page, engraved illustrations, maps and plans in the text. Full leather binding with red and brown title labels gilt on the spine, the edges of the covers are worn, a good copy.

Extracted from: Aune (M.G.) Sir Thomas Herbert. Travels in Africa, Persia and Asia the Great in Seventeeth Century News Fall-Winter 2014: ‘Sir Thomas Herbert (1606-1682) is best known as a companion to Charles I in the last years of the monarch's life. Herbert was also one of a group of English and Scotsmen who emerged in the seventeenth century, journeying great distances and returning to write lengthy travel narratives about their experiences. Their books were typically encyclopedic, indebted to humanist conventions of the previous century. Herbert's Travels was among the most popular, appearing in five printings between 1634 and 1677.

Herbert made the best of the experience by composing a narrative of the journey there and back with digressions on the various places and peoples he encountered. The voyage out began in Dover, sailed via the Canary Islands, Robben Island, around the Cape of Good Hope, stopped at Madagascar, Ethiopia, Goa, and Surat seeing Coryate's grave, eventually arriving at Gambrun [Bandar Abbas]. Herbert and the remaining English returned through India and again around the Cape. After his return, while waiting to assume his position at court Herbert wrote the first version of his travel narrative, A Description of the Persian Monarchy now beinge: the Oriental Indyes, lies and other parts of the greater Asia and Africk (1634). The book was an impressive folio with an engraved title page and thirty-five copperplate engravings and maps.

Herbert continued to work on the book, producing an enlarged edition entitled Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique in 1638. A third revision that included still more, largely historical material, had three printings in 1664, 1665, and 1677. The 1665 edition is noteworthy for the inclusion of an engraving of Persepolis by Wenceslas Hollar, commissioned by Herbert.’