NOTES ON THE ISLAND OF CORSICA IN 1868

First edition. Publisher's original brown cloth with gilt stamped flagpole and painted flag to the upper board, titles and decorative endpieces in gilt to the spine. The page edges painted red, white and blue, as issued. With a frontispiece engraving after a drawing by Edward Lear, retaining the original tissue guard. A very good copy, the binding firm with a little bumping at the extremities and a couple of light marks to the cloth. The contents, with a little spotting to the prelims are otherwise clean throughout and without inscriptions or stamps.

An attractively produced volume by the wealthy Scottish resident of Ajaccio, Tomasina Campbell (1804-88). Notable for being one of the first travel guides devoted to Corsica alone, it was notably also one of the first pieces of promotion outside the medical tracts and accounts of bandits or snippets about Napoleon that actively encouraged visitors to the Island.When the author first came to Corsica in the winter of 1867, there were few British visitors. By the time of publication Miss Campbell had 'roamed the bandit-ridden lonely roads of the interior' in a small carriage accompanied only by her maid and had covered most of the island (Angus Davidson: Edward Lear. Penguin, 1950, p.163). Edward Lear (who provides the frontispiece illustration 'In the forest of Valdaniello') in his 'Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica' (published in 1870) describes the guide as an 'excellent little book […] with an accuracy derived from personal examination of everything described'.Later in 1868 saw publication of the first Baedeker to include Corsica (in their guide to Northern Italy) and Murray's Handbook For Travelers In The Islands Of Corsica And Sardinia.