Journal of the British Embassy to Persia;

the most complete edition

The most desirable and complete third edition which contains the long awaited part II relating the rest of the voyage in Persia and the return journey, as well as the extended part I of the second edition issued in 1825, and Elements of Sanskrit by Price published separately in 1828.

William Price (1780-1830) was a British diplomat and orientalist who, in 1810, was appointed Assistant Secretary and Interpreter to Gore Ouseley's Embassy to Persia. Even amongst such exalted British Farsi speakers he stood out as the most fluent and possessed the ability to memorise long stretches of Farsi just by ear. Price kept a travel journal and made hundreds of drawings, of landscapes and buildings, during his travels but they were mostly only published in his own works. He recorded tablets and cuneiforms on his trips to Persepolis and Babylon, and paid particular emphasis to the languages and arts of the region: he dedicated a chapter to one of the principal courtly painters Aka Ali Nakosh, and translates Jami's introduction to Jusuf and Zulaikha, found on the wall of the caravansary of Dingah.

The number of plates varies in surviving copies. Ours closely matches the copy in the Bibliothèque Municipale of Lyon which has 46 plates. Two supplementary plates, not found in the Lyon copy, but included in the 1825 edition are present in this copy: 'Asterak' and 'Khodihisar'. The copy at the Wellcome Library has only 36 plates, as do the copies in Harvard and the Library of Congress, but the Yale and British libraries are listed as having 74 plates, likely including tables and charts.

'Second edition' (i.e. third edition); 2 vols in 1, landscape folio (28 x 39 cm); printed in double columns, with text in English, Armenian, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Devanagari, 48 engraved plates, including frontispiece after W. Price laid down on later leaf, most edges uncut, two HMSO stamps to title, occasional marginal toning, minor 3cm tear to upper margin of last three leaves; later twentieth-century faux wood binding, spine lettered in silver gilt, a very good copy; [viii], 68, 36, [ii], 56, 52pp.

Wilson, p.179