Beckford (William).- Hoskins (G.A.) Travels in Ethiopia, above the Second Cataract of the Nile, first edition, folding engraved map, 54 lithographed plates on 53 sheets (one printed on both sides), 2 hand-coloured and 4 chromolithographed, several folding and/or double-page, wood-engraved illustrations, tissue guards, map lightly foxed and torn at central fold, William Beckford's copy with his pencil number "W.29" to corner of front free endpaper, bookplate of Henry J.B.Clements, contemporary half diced russia, gilt, by J.Mackenzie, spine titled in gilt within double fillet and with Beckford's cinquefoil ornament, a little rubbed, spine faded, joints cracked, [Blackmer 832; Shapero, Africana 186], 4to, 1835.

⁂ Hoskins "was the first to describe and illustrate the antiquities of Meroe and was one of the few Europeans to have ventured beyond the second cataract at that time." (Shapero, Africana). The four chromolithographed plates, printed by Hullmandel and dated April 1835, are reputed to be the earliest English examples to be published.

Provenance: William Beckford (1760-1844), novelist, writer and collector, whose library passed to his son-in-law, the 10th Duke of Hamilton, and was sold in the great Hamilton Palace sales of 1882-83. Many of Beckford's books were bound with a gilt cinquefoil from his mother's Hamilton arms on the spine or corners.

Hamilton Palace sale (1882) Part II lot 928; Clements library sale (1966) lot 151.