Travels in Greece: or an Account of a Tour Made at the Expense of the Society of Dilettanti.
Oxford: At the Clarendon Press... London: Sold by J. Dodsley, J. Robson [et al], 1776. First edition. 4to. (iv), xiv, (ii), 304 pp. Contemporary full calf, rebacked, retaining one of the original gilt lettered red labels, early ownership inscription, "Somerset Bridge Club," to the front free endpaper. 7 plates - a folding map of Greece, a folding plan of Athens and 5 full page plans and charts. Some wear to the boards, short closed tear to the lower margin of the folding map with a neat tissue repair on the verso, some browning, very good overall. Chandler's journal of his time in Asia Minor appeared the previous year. He was part of a group of travellers including the architect Nicholas Revett and the painter William Edmund Pars that was commissioned by the Society of Dilettanti to explore Turkey, Greece and the Ionian Islands. They arrived in Turkey in the summer of 1764 and remained there for about a year, keeping Smyrna (Izmir) as their base from where they would make excursions to painstakingly record ancient monuments and buildings. In late summer 1765 the group moved to Athens with the same aims. They found the Parthenon in a ruinous state and Chandler was able to acquire stray pieces that had been removed from the site. Their work was published by the society in two substantial illustrated volumes as "Ionian Antiquities", in 1769. Chandler also published another work on the inscriptions he had recorded in 1772. His record of his tour in Greece is important for many reasons, not least his account of Athens. This copy has an important and rather unusual colonial provenance, the inscription being that of the Somerset Bridge Club - an intellectual society founded in Bermuda in the 1760s and which existed for about seventy years. The club was convened at a local house called Crossways which was adjacent to the bridge between the main island and Somerset Island. Dinner would be taken and card games played but the meetings were primarily used as an opportunity for members to discuss and debate literary, scientific and social matters. An original pamphlet of the rules of the club is cited in an article for the Bermudian Magazine by Elizabeth Jones, enshrined in those rules was a commitment of a proportion of the annual membership fee going towards the upkeep of a library. The article mentions that one of the books from the library is now held in the official Bermudan Archives, this copy of Chandler's Greek travels would appear to be another rare survivor. Item #49474
Price: £1,250.00