WARBURTON, Eliot “The Crescent & the Cross; Travels in Egypt & the Holy Land” [1883]

WARBURTON, Eliot. The Crescent and the Cross; or, Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land.

Philadelphia: Hubbard Brothers, Publishers, 1883. “Edgewood Edition,” illustrated. Octavo, approximately 7.5" x 5.5", xiv + 268 + 178pp. Publisher’s pictorial gray cloth over boards, front cover and spine stamped in black and gilt with Egyptian-themed ornament and title panel in gilt; patterned endpapers. Illustrated with numerous full-page and in-text engravings depicting scenes from Egypt and the Levant. Interior clean with moderate, even toning; binding firm; rubbing and soiling to cloth, heavier at spine and extremities, with minor fraying at head and foot. Very Good-.

Warburton’s immensely popular 19th-century travel narrative blends romanticized adventure with firsthand observation of Egypt and the Holy Land, part of the Victorian fascination with the Near East. The “Edgewood Edition” is particularly striking in its decorative cloth, echoing the Orientalist aesthetic that made the work such a publishing success on both sides of the Atlantic.