The Guide-Book. A Pictorial Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. (Including some of the More Remarkable Incidents in the Life of Mohammed, the Arab Lawgiver).

BURTON, Richard Francis.

Published by London: Printed for the Author, by William Clowes & Sons, 1865

First edition of this desirable piece of Burtoniana, in which he corrects some of the errors in his earlier Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage, describes the main rites of the hajj, and offers an account of the life, death, and burial of Mohammed. Burton prepared this booklet to accompany an exhibition of "dissolving views", worked up from his own sketches, held at the Royal Polytechnic Institution in Regent Street. Such illustrated travel lectures were a sophisticated form of magic-lantern entertainment, prefiguring the invention of cinema. Under the leadership of John Henry Pepper, the institution had become "a repository for inventions, a pioneering venue for the popularisation of science, but at the same time a place of popular entertainment, famous for its screen-based extravaganzas and stage-based illusions" (Brooker, p. 189). Isabel Burton recalled the event in her life of her husband: "On the 17th of May the Polytechnic in London opened with an account of Richard's travels in Mecca, and a dissolving view of Richard's picture in uniform. It was arranged by Mr. Pepper of 'Pepper's Ghost,' and a quantity of little green pamphlets with the lecture were sold at the door" (p. 398). In his textual commentary, Burton "sought to demystify Islam for the British public, giving a respectful account of its origins, doctrines, and rituals" (Kennedy, p. 80). Casada 39; Penzer, p. 76; Spink 37. Jeremy Brooker, "The Polytechnic Ghost", Early Popular Visual Culture, vol. 2, 2007; Isabel Burton, The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, vol. I, 1893; Dane Kennedy, The Highly Civilized Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World, 2009. Octavo. Wood-engraved portrait frontispiece, with tissue-guard as issued, by James Cooper after a drawing by William James Allen. Original green glazed paper wrappers, sometime rather crudely rebacked, front cover lettered in black within black frame. Housed in custom black cloth solander box. Contemporary bookseller's blind stamp on rear cover. Moderate vertical crease to vol., covers rubbed and marked in places, head of front cover with small repair, light toning and creasing internally: very good. Seller Inventory # 188123

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Guide-Book. A Pictorial Pilgrimage to ...
Publisher: London: Printed for the Author, by William Clowes & Sons, 1865
Edition: 1st Edition