Stewart Dalby Spending it
Travel literature is a field in which the collector would seem spoilt for choice. The variety is vast: exploration, seafaring, biology, outer space, anthropology, derring-do, geography, geology and meteorology.
Some people collect modern tourist guides while others collect rare 16th- century books about how the world was first circumnavigated.
What would one include in a collection? Travel writer Eric Newby, in his anthology on travel writing, A Book of Travellers’ Tales, leaves out various categories, including:
l biblical travellers;
l sailors or travellers by sea, out of sight of land – they deserve an anthology of their own;
l mountaineers for the same reason; and
l travellers whose narratives are too long for even a large book.
To this list I would add women travel writers, who definitely deserve space of their own.
To real aficionados of travel books, 16th-century to 18th-century books are like gold dust. The earliest source work on English voyages is Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation, published in 1589.
Captain James Cook has been called the greatest maritime explorer of his age. His three circumnavigations of the globe between 1768 and 1779 are the cornerstones of modern exploration. Quarto editions of his Voyages, in eight volumes with a folio atlas, are most sought after.
These early works are increasingly rare and expensive. The Cook works would cost at least 250 000 (R2 475 000). As Clive Farahar, an antiquarian travel book specialist, said: “Availability dictates that the bulk of a travel library will comprise books from the great age of exploration, from the late 18th century to the late 19th century, roughly from Cook to [David] Livingstone and [Henry Morton] Stanley.”
Early 20th-century travellers were a hangover from Victorian times. They are actively collected and not, as yet, inordinately expensive. There is great interest among collectors and dealers in this period. This was recently highlighted by the coming sale at Sotheby’s of 3 000 travel books from the library of Peter Hopkirk, author of The Great Game and five other works on imperial rivalry.
Roger Griffiths, the specialist in charge of the sale, said: “This is an incredible collection – possibly the largest of Middle Eastern and Central Asian travel books from the 19th and 20th century in private hands.”
The collection, though not on sale until Sotheby’s Asia Week in October, will establish benchmark prices in this area, and for those who are just discovering the field it will demonstrate the range of availability of 19th- and 20th-century literature.
All the famous explorers will be on offer: Sven Hedin, Charles Doughty, Heinrich Schliemann and Austen Henry Layard.
Hopkirk began collecting 40 years ago. He visited 100 countries as a journalist and picked up many of his books for a pittance. He will certainly see a great increase in prices.
At the top end is Richard Burton’s famous book, A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Mecca. This should be estimated at 20 000 (R198 000) and may realise more.
ENDS