Wanderings of a Pilgrim, in Search of the Picturesque, During Four-and-Twenty Years in the East; with Revelations of Life in the Zenana. Illustrated with Sketches from Nature. Volumes I and II

London: Pelham Richardson, 23, Cornhill. Printed by Gilbert and Rivington, St. John's Square, 1850. 2 volumes. 8vo. (11 x 7 1/4 inches). First edition. 50 lithograph plates, 20 of which are hand-colored, 1 heightened with gold. Vol. I: [2] [i]-xxxv [1]-479. 28 lithograph plates, 10 of which are hand-colored. 516 pp. With folding panorama of the elevation of the Himalayas in pocket at rear. Ganesha Frontispiece, Title, Dedication, Invocation, Introduction, Contents, List of Plates, Glossary, Wanderings of a Pilgrim, Oriental Proverbs and Sayings, Elevation Folding Chart. Vol. II: [2] [i]-xiii [3] [1]-523. 22 lithograph plates, 10 of which are hand-colored. 542 pp. Krishna Frontispiece, Title, Contents, List of Plates, Wanderings of a Pilgrim, Appendix, Index. With author's name in Urdu script on the title page. Publisher's red cloth, Eastern pictorial vignettes stamped in gilt on front cover and blind-stamped on back cover, with gilt esoteric symbols at head of spine, in a modern emerald cloth-covered clamshell box

First edition copy of a Welsh woman's nineteeth-century travel memoir of India. A compulsively readable account with lively lithographs, many hand-colored. In the original publisher's binding with custom clamshell box.

"Let the result be what it may, I have launched my boat." - Fanny Parks, from the title page Fanny Parks was a Welsh woman who sailed for Bengal in 1822 with her husband Charles Parks, a civil servant in the East India Company. Wanderings is a distillation of the lively journals she began as a record for her mother in England and continued over the subsequent twenty-four years she spent East, with intervals in England and South Africa. Her narrative is defined by its considered observation, lack of prejudice, and compassion for the people of whom she wrote. Immediately upon her disembarkment at Calcutta, Parks began learning Hindustani, Persian, and Urdu. (She signed her book and many of its plates in Urdu.) Favorite pastimes included exploring on the back of her Arabian horse and playing the sitar. In 1826, the couple were posted to Prayag, near Allahabad, and from there Parks began a series of expeditions, often solo, throughout the Indian countryside, including to Cawnpore, Meerut, Delhi, Agra, Landour, and the Himalayas. The second volume contains her further travels to Cape Town and other parts of South Africa. Parks had an anthropological streak, and her writing is littered with old Indian proverbs, for which she provides translations, and Indian mythology, as well as reflections on the family lives, religion, and social customs of different Indian peoples. Her memoirs serve also as a record of the British colonial mindset and its evolution over the decades of the mid-nineteenth century, recording changes in Britain's governance over India, the economic impact of its politics, and the domestic political issues in Indian society. Parks's writing also covered the more controversial topics of her time: An extreme example was the murder of a woman in sati by those who felt male heirs were more entitled to her possessions than she was. Parks condemned the event and went on to also criticize the laws governing married women in England. Parks subtitled her book "Revelations of Life in the Zenana." The word "Zenana" refers to "the part of the house reserved for the women in India and Pakistan." As a woman she was able to enter the Zenana, witnessing marriage and religious ceremonies not yet reported on by male writers. For Parks, the thought of returning to Wales in 1844 was appalling: "'How I love life in this wilderness!" (Wayward Women, p.219) List of Plates: Vol. I: 1. Frontispiece: Ganésh, to face the Title. 2. Introduction: The Camels. 3. The Albatross. 4. Car Nicobar. 5. The Sircar. 6. The Churük Puja. 7. Puja of the Tulsi. 8. Bengali Woman. 9. The Ice Pits. 10. Temple of Bhawani, and Suttees, Alopee Bagh. 11. A Dhrumsala, Bene Mahadeo Ghãt. 12. Adansonia Digitata. 13. A Kutcherry. 14. Hindustani Song. 15. A Barkandaz. 16. The Durwan. 17. The Thug's Dice. 18. Elephant Fights. 19. Pedigree of the Kings of Oude. 20. Lachhmi, the Goddess of Beauty. 21. The Grasscutter. 22. Hebrew Hymn. 23. The Imams the Leaders of the Faithful. 24. The Täj. 25. Ground-Plan of the Tomb of the Taj. 26. The Tomb of Akbar Shah. 27. Tomb of Shaikh Selim Cheestie. 28. Pedigree of Colonel William Gardner. Vol. II: 29. Frontispiece: Kaniya-jee and the Gopis, to face the Title. 30. Superstitions of the Natives. 31. The Spring-Bow. 32. Kaniya-jee and the Gopis. 33. Ancient Hindu Ruin. 34. The Hindu Triad. 35. Plan of Delhi. 36. View from the Pilgrim's Banglã. 37. The Kharita. 38. Pennycross Chapel. 39. The Bushwoman. 40. A Kafir Warrior. 41. The Southern Cross. 42. Jaganath. 43. Three Satis and a Mandap near Ghazipür. 44. Kalsas. 45. The Temple of Bhawäni. 46. Bhagwan. 47. Native Sugar Mills. 48. Waterspouts. 49. Pico. 50. Elevation of the Himalaya.

Abbey Travel 476. Bobins The Exotic and the Beautiful 1120. Eaton, Fanny Parks: Intrepid Memsahib, passim. Mendelssohn III, pp 630-31. Robinson, Wayward Women, p.219. (Inventory #: 41446)