Details
The Overland Alphabet, from Sketches taken "en route" by Isabel D --, with 28 illustrations coloured. London: William Tegg & Co., [c.1855]. 4° (255 x 220mm). Hand-coloured illustrations lithographed by Maclure, Macdonald & Macgregor (some light staining and spotting). Original hand-coloured pictorial wrappers (a few nicks and short tears, lightly browned and stained).
RARE. A charmingly-illustrated alphabetical account in execrable rhyming couplets of often dubious scansion describing the journey of an English packet-boat, the 500 Horse Power "Bentinck", from her home port in the English Channel, via Cape Finisterre, Gibraltar, La Vallette, Gozo, Suez, the Red Sea, the Nile ("N is the Nile which we really forgot/To describe more at length when we were on the spot"), Madras, finally arriving at Calcutta at the letter 'Y'. The account ends with something of an admission of defeat: "Z is the last on the list it is true,/But no word can I find for it, Reader, can you?" Osborne II, 677. Not in Abbey.
RARE. A charmingly-illustrated alphabetical account in execrable rhyming couplets of often dubious scansion describing the journey of an English packet-boat, the 500 Horse Power "Bentinck", from her home port in the English Channel, via Cape Finisterre, Gibraltar, La Vallette, Gozo, Suez, the Red Sea, the Nile ("N is the Nile which we really forgot/To describe more at length when we were on the spot"), Madras, finally arriving at Calcutta at the letter 'Y'. The account ends with something of an admission of defeat: "Z is the last on the list it is true,/But no word can I find for it, Reader, can you?" Osborne II, 677. Not in Abbey.
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