The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan in Asia, Africa, and Europe (1810)

Two volumes, Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1810, half leather with raised bands and labels to spines,(Lord) Courtown bookplates, dedicated to the Marchioness of Hertford, 738 pages, 135 x 215mm, leather not present in top compartment of spine (volume one), some wear to back hinge (upper edge, volume two), foxing to pages in both volumes, boards show wear with extensive shelf-rubbing and loss of colour (green), colour has been partially restored to  front board of volume one,  internally: very good, overall condition: fair to good.

In 1810, the orientalist scholar Charles Stewart translated and published an extraordinary travel narrative written by a Persian-speaking Indian poet and scholar named Mirza Abu Talib Khan. Abu Talib traveled from India to Africa, and on to Ireland, England, and France, where he recorded his observations of European culture with wit and precision. The narrative's vital and controversial account of British imperial society is one of the earliest examples of a colonial subject addressing the cultural dynamics of metropolitan Britain, and its complex critique of empire challenges many preconceptions about intercultural relations during this era. Following his European sojourn, Abu Talib's remarkable Shi'ite pilgrimage through present day Turkey and Iraq further enhances his meditation on the encounter between Islam and European modernity.(Broadview Press)

"The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan is perhaps the most significant 'reverse travelogue' published in Europe during the Romantic era, and one of the first published accounts of Britain by an Asian author. Abu Talib casts a fresh eye on the sites and personalities of Georgian London, combining a sense of wonder at the technical and aesthetic achievements of Britain at the dawn of the nineteenth century with a sharp social and moral critique of the new masters of Bengal." ( Nigel Leask, University of Glasgow)

"Translated with sympathy by the distinguished early nineteenth-century orientalist Charles Stewart, the first-person account of Abu Talib's travels and residency in London offers a subtle ironic commentary on the expectations and prejudices of the period"." ( Ros Ballaster, Mansfield College, Oxford University)

The bookplates are for The Earl of Courtown, in the county of Wexford, in the Peerage of Ireland. James Thomas Stopford was the fourth Earl of Courtown in 1810.