Notes of Travel. Extracts from Home Letters written during a Two Years' Tour Round the World, 1879-1881

[London], Printed for Private Circulation [by B. Clay, Sons, and Taylor], , 1882. 8vo. Original green cloth gilt; corners bumped, sporadic light foxing, a few marginal tears and light creases to maps, otherwise a very good copy. Contemporary armorial bookplate of William Frederic Lawrence, Cowesfield, Wilts.Only edition. Presentation copy, inscribed ('From the writer') and initialled by the author, dated July, 1882. The letters record a young traveller's world tour, from Liverpool to Quebec, California, Australia and New Zealand; he spent nearly a year in the Antipodes (1879-80). He then visited China, Japan, the Philippines, South-east Asia, Singapore [check] and India. He and his wife (aged 28 and 22) drowned in the English Channel off Dieppe in 1887: a four-page offprint from the Wokingham Parish Magazine (torn in half) is tipped in. Most of the few known copies were issued without the maps, which were specially commissioned from James Wyld. The copy at the National Library of New Zealand includes the maps in a separate volume. COPAC locates copies in the BL (no maps, as stated above), in the London Library (no maps), and at Cambridge (no maps). See Bagnall, New Zealand national bibliography to the year 1960, nos. 709-10. Book