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Later edition. 8vo (in 4s), pp. [iv], 189, [1 blank] incl. 'Appendix to first part' + fold-out map of Naples. Contemporary quarter vellum, sparse gilt ruling to spine, red morocco title label lettered in gilt, marbled boards. Edges speckled red. Rubbed, vellum a little grubby, pushing to extremities, spine darkened, title label chipped. Endpapers gently toned, armorial ex libris, featuring a belled falcon clutching a belt in its dexter claw, with "R. B. C" below, to front pastedown, "Rowland Cotton" written in brown ink and a confident hand to ffep. Occasional grubby marks, pencil scoring to two paragraphs in the section discussing the Museo Borbonico, short closed tear to bottom margin of pp. 121/2, two brief notes in brown ink (pp. 145 and 174), jagged 7cm closed tear to map. Else, clean, tight and bright. Very good. Unusual in the trade and research libraries: JiscLHD locates one copy only of this single volume edition (British School at Rome Library & Archive). A handsomely bound copy of a later edition of Luigi Piale's Hand-book, Or New Guide of Naples (c.1853) for British and American tourists, attributed to Jeanette de Villepreux Power; owned by Rowland Cotton (perhaps Rowland Hugh Cotton of Etwall Hall, 1833-1887) and featuring brief marginalia and highlighting, hinting at his (or a contemporary traveller's) plans whilst visiting Naples: two 'First Rate Hotels' are asterisked, with a note about banking added below: "C:M: [de] Rothschild & fi[g]ls," while pencil scoring beside paragraphs discussing the Museo Borbonico's collections, shows particular interest in "the room of the oggetti riserveti [which] contains monuments of obscene subjects in marble, bronze, terra cotta, vases and paintings. The religion of the ancients did not like our's prescribe decency of customs; these objects which in us excite a blush passed unheeded in those days" (p. 67). Power's Guida per la Sicilia had been published in 1842. The first edition of Luigi Piale's travel guide in English had appeared in 1846, titled Guide to Naples and Sicily adapted from those of Galanti and Mme. Power according to the latest observations of travellers, with a second edition following in 1847. Our single volume edition, Hand-book, Or The New Guide of Naples, seems also to have formed the first section of a later Piale edition, the 1851/3 New Guide to Naples, Sicily and the Environs, carefully compiled and enl. according to Galanti and Mrs. Power (2 volumes in 1). Presumably, single volumes, such as this, were bound separately for those travellers only wishing to visit Naples. The entrepreneurial Luigi Piale "owned the Monaldini bookshop and Piale's Library and reading rooms on Piazza di Spagna [at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome] then, as now, a favourite haunt of foreigners in the city". The extraordinary Jeannette de Villepreux-Power (1794 1871), dressmaker to French royalty and pioneering marine biologist and inventor of the modern aquarium, had married the English merchant James Power in 1818 and together they moved to Messina, Sicily, where "through study and exploration of the island [she] quickly became an authority on the geology, archaeology and natural history". Power had left Sicily in 1843, a difficult voyage that included a shipwreck, in which she lost much of her natural history collection, notes and scientific illustrations, but not her life. Rowland Hugh Cotton of Etwall Hall (1833-1887) was J. P. for Derbyshire and Staffordshire and Hon. Major 3rd King's Own Stafford Militia. He succeeded his father in 1857, perhaps after taking a grand tour, including a visit to Naples?
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