Fine Books & Manuscripts

LAYARD, Austen Henry (1817-1894). Discoveries in the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; with travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the desert; being the result of a second expedition undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum. London: John Murray, 1853. 8vo (222 x 143 mm). 2 folding maps, 14 plates (4 folding including frontispiece), and numerous woodcuts in the text (some foxing to fold outs and half title). Publisher’s ribbed brown cloth, pictorially blindstamped covers and spine showing the Great Winged Bull, gilt titling to spine, original salmon coated endpapers, bound by Edmonds & Remnants (binder’s ticket to rear pastedown). (Inner hinges reinforced, expert repairs to outer hinges). Provenance: Earl of Granville (bookplate); Gertrude Sanders (inscription to pastedown with the address of “23 Montague Place, Museum, London” which was also once home to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle); Mrs. Thomas H. Sanders (inscription); bookseller’s ticket. FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY TO THE 2nd EARL OF GRANVILLE AND DEDICATEE with the inscription on half-title: “The Earl Granville/from the author”. Layard’s important second British Museum archaeological expedition that identified Kouyunjik as the site of Nineveh and is considered one of the best written books of travel in the language. Abbey, Travel, 364; Atabey 687; Blackmer 969. From the private library of a prominent Chicago collector, part II.