Beschreibung:

Central Asia.- Wolff (Rev. Joseph) Travels and Adventures..., 2 vol., second edition, lithographed portrait (lightly foxed), 3pp. errata in vol.1, old library stamp of John Brymer at head of titles, contemporary half tree calf, gilt, spines gilt with red and green roan labels, 8vo, 1860; with a song sheet composed by Lady Georgiana M.Wolff (the author's wife) signed and extensively inscribed by Joseph Wolff in English and Farsi (3) ⁂ Joseph Wolff (1795-1862), a German Jew, converted to Christianity when young and eventually became vicar of Isle Brewers in Somerset. After studying oriental languages at Tubingen he set off on various missionary expeditions to the East, generally full of adventure. At one point he was briefly made a slave and after his redemption had to walk from Bokhara to Kabul with no clothes, while in India the Governor-General's wife thought he was dangerously close to insanity. In 1843 he made a second journey to Bokhara to discover the fate of Stoddart and Conolly, two British diplomats who had already been executed by the Amir of Bokhara, and was lucky to escape with his own life. In 1827 he had married Lady Georgiana Mary Walpole, who wrote the music for the song sheet to raise money for a school-room at Isle Brewers. The sheet is inscribed (in both English and Farsi) "The amiable Georgina, daughter of Copes Esq., the ornament of all ladies of Europe has bought this paper from Joseph Wolff the Dervish" and further "If this lady...would give me her heart I would give for one mole of her cheek all the treasure of Samarkand & Bokhara".