Refutation of Lieutenant Wellsted's Attack

author's presentation copy

Rare work concerning Wellsted's travels and the dispute over the travels of James Bruce. Wellsted had travelled to the Red Sea, Arabia and Oman between 1830 and 1837 and produced two works about Arabia based on his travels. George Annesley, styled Viscount Valentia (1770-1844), had travelled through the Red Sea in 1802-6 and claimed much of his account of the area was new.

Robinson claimed that Wellsted in his work Travels in Arabia endeavoured to obtain undue credit for James Bruce at the expense of Lord Valentia: '... I think that I shall be enabled to prove, and that from Lieut. Wellsted's own work, that not until now have the real piracies and fictions of 'Bruce' been fully established'. There were many contemporary critics of Bruce: he wrote his enormous five volume account of his voyages twelve years after his return and did not directly his reference his journals. Frederick Robinson was presumably an officer on board the Minerva during Annesley's journey and could testify to the genuineness of Annesley's accounts as opposed to the allegedly unsubstantiated Bruce. Modern experts find Bruce's accounts totally believable and accurate.

Rare; with no copies appearing at auction in the last thirty years. This copy, of what was likely a very limited number privately printed for presentation, is inscribed on the end-leaf 'William Stride Esq. With the Author's Compliments'.

First edition; 4to; inscribed copy, 7 engraved maps (light offsetting); original brown cloth, faded and worn, a good copy; ii, 17 pp.