[PARKES, Fanny (1794-1875)]. Wanderings of a Pilgrim, in Search of the Picturesque, During Four-and-Twenty Years in the East; with Revelations of Life in the Zenana. London: Pelham Richardson, 1850.

2 volumes, 8vo (271 x 183 mm). 49 lithographed plates including frontispieces (of 50, lacking the folding panorama of an Elevation of the Himalaya Mountains) (20 hand-colored with a few heightened in gum arabic, 6 tinted), 20pp. advertisements bound in at the end dated 21 March 1928. (Slight soiling and some occasional spotting, a few plates with short tears not affecting image with occasional repairs, minor offsetting.) Contemporary calf gilt, edges marbled (modern rebacking, some minor soiling, a touch of wear to extremities).

FIRST EDITION of Parkes' travelogue of colonial India, recounting her extensive travels to Cawnpore, Meerut, Delhi, the Himalayas, and other sites. Parkes lived in India for 24 years with her husband, Charles Crawford Parkes, a civil servant in the East India Company, beginning in 1822. Along with her travels, this memoir includes topics like learning to speak Persian, Hindustani, and Urdu as well as Parkes' interactions with inhabitants of the areas she visited. As a woman, Parkes was free to enter the Zenana, a private area in a household reserved for women, to witness various religious ceremonies that could not be reported by male writers at the time. Abbey, Travel, 476.

Property from the Collection of Robert S. Brown, Cincinnati, Ohio