Jan Potocki: Podróż do Turcyi i Egiptu [1849]

Jan Potocki, best known today as the author of “The Manuscript Found in Saragossa”, was also one of the first Polish travellers to describe the East from his own experience. In 1784 he sailed across the Black Sea to Constantinople and went on to Egypt. He published his account in French as “Voyage en Turquie et en Égypte, fait en l’année 1784” (1788), and an anonymous Polish translation appeared in Warsaw in 1789.

This is the Kraków edition of 1849, printed by D. E. Friedlein. It was prepared by Żegota Pauli, librarian and secretary to Adam Potocki, the author’s grandson, who added a note on Jan Potocki’s life and a list of his works. The edition opens with the publisher’s printed dedication to Count Adam Potocki, member of the Kraków Learned Society and deputy to the Austrian Imperial Diet. Scholars attribute the translation to Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz.

A clean copy. We hand-bound the book in our bindery in burgundy natural leather: raised bands, black gilt-lettered spine label “JAN HR. POTOCKI”, blind-tooled frames on the covers, peacock-pattern marbled endpapers with the label of the Antykwariat Polski bindery.