SONNINI, Charles Nicolas Sigisbert (1751--1812)
[Voyage dans la Haute et Basse Égypte. English]
Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt: undertaken by order of the old government of France; by C.S. Sonnini, engineer in the French navy, and member of several scientific and literary societies. Illustrated with forty engravings; consisting of portraits, views, plans, a geographical chart, antiquities, plants, animals, &c. Drawn on the spot, under the author's inspection. Translated from the French, by Henry Hunter, D.D. In three volumes. ...
London: printed for John Stockdale. T. Gillet, printer, 1799.
3 vols ; 21.0 cm. (8º)
I: xix, [1], 376 p., engr. frontis. port., 8 pl., fold. engr. map
II: vii, [1], 368 p., engr. frontis. port., pl. 9--27
III: viii, 324 p., pl. 28--37

Sonnini made his tour of Egypt between 1777 and 1780. His Voyage was published in 3 volumes with an atlas volume of plates in Paris in An VII (September 1798--September 1799). Hunter (1741--1802) published his translation a year before William Combe who, though greatly annoyed at being forestalled, had to admit that the rival version "abounded with so many lively images, so many brilliant flashes, so many brilliant sallies of wit, such a multiplicity of flashes of merriment ..." that Hunter was "superior to [him], and to Sonnini". The two portrait frontispieces and the map bring the total number of plates to 40 as called for in the title. ESTC t113765.

Copy Notes Volume I inscribed in pencil on front free-endpaper 3 vols: 18s:; this was the price Soane paid Thomas Boone on 8 July 1807. (Spiers Box). With a folded fragment of paper giving details of a loan inserted as a book-mark in vol. III at p. 158. Volumes II and III with some passages underlined or noted in the margins in red ink.

Binding C18th mottled calf, gilt-ruled borders, gilt-tooled spines, dark blue & green morocco spine-labels.

Reference Number 3994