Totall Discourse of the Rare Adventures and Painefull Peregrinations of Long Nineteene Yeares...

London, J. Okes, 1640. 4to (180x135mm) 514 pp w/8pp Table @back. Woodcut frontis & 8 woodcut illus in text including frontis repeated. 18th c half-calf w/ speckled calf boards.Small tear repair to frontis, title pg repaired with loss of one letter. Bottom fore-edge corner repaired to p. 395 with slight loss of text. Some worming repaired from pp 263to 435. Some side notes are shaved. Various names in contemporary hands on prelims and final pages. Worn morocco label on spine, book is worn and rubbed, corners bumped. Spine is repaired but separating at rear. Third edition. From the library of Sefik E. Atabey.
MPA/jam


William Lithgow (1582-1645?) began his "painfull Peregrinations," when in his hometown of Lanark; four brothers caught him with their sister and cut off his ears, wherein he soon left for Paris. Among his many adventures he accounts avoiding pirates, helping to liberate captives and being so lucky as to come upon two "beardless barons" who had killed one another in a duel and rewarding himself with their ducats and diamonds. He also happened to be the heir of some fellow travellers who died in the Egyptian desert. In Spain he was imprisoned for being a spy, racked, burned and hung by his toes. He was rescued by the English consul who chanced to hear of his plight and was brought home to England and presented on a feather bed to James I who sent him to Bath to recover. His writings brought news of coffee houses, Turkish baths and pigeon posts and other cultural novelties.

Early partial accounts of his travels appeared in 1614 and 1616. The first collected editon appeared in 1632. It was reprinted in this edition during the reign of Charles I in 1640.



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