Constantinople During the Crimean War
London: Richard Bentley, 1863.
First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. Large 8vo. pp. xvi, 500, illustrated with four chromolithograph plates. Publisher's green cloth, skillfully re-cased. Mild spine slant, light edgewear to boards, contemporary ownership signature. Lady Hornby and her husband Sir Edmund Grimani Hornby arrived at Constantinople in September 1855 in a troop ship laden with packages "for Miss Nightingale at Scutari." Over the following year, while Sir Edmund did his work—negotiating a British loan to Turkey—Lady Hornby spent time with her peers at embassy parties (which are described in detail, including the first time an Ottoman sultan attended an embassy ball), but also learned the language, noted political gossip and news from the front, and walked the streets in both Constantinople and Therapia (on the Black Sea), making careful observations of the landscape, architecture, and Turkish life and custom. The illustrations (all of domestic scenes) are by fellow British traveler Mary Adelaide Walker, who arrived in Turkey around the same time as the Hornbys and lived in the East for the next forty years.
Item #16790
Sold