Voyages to the East, the David Parsons Collection, Offered by Four Booksellers

Four major booksellers, Peter Harrington, the William Reese Company, James Cummins Bookseller, and Hordern House, have combined to present a catalogue of Voyages to the East, the Parsons Collection. This the final sale of the Parsons collection, and as one can gather by the talent involved in the sale, Parsons collected at a very high level. He was an Englishman, Oxford M.A., who migrated to Atlanta where he was a highly regarded actuary. Late in life, he became a book collector, developing his exceptional collection. He died in 2014. These are some selections from his collection of voyages to the East.

He died 700 years ago, but there is still no western traveler to the East whose journey is more notable than that of Marco Polo. He may not have been the first European to reach China, but he was the first to provide a thorough account of what he saw. He spent 24 years on the road before finally returning to his native Venice. Taken prisoner during a war between Venice and Genoa, he used the time to dictate his account to a cellmate. We start with two manuscript leaves from a very early account of Polo's journey. They were created in Tuscany in 1320-30, two to three decades after Polo's death. They contain a contiguous extract from his account, including the first description of paper money. He also describes paper making and activities in the court of Kublai Khan. The neatly written two-column pages featuring decorative initials were written in a Franco-Italic script. They survived only because they were used in the binding of a later book. Item 1. [Sold]

This is another traveler to the East's account of those lands, the only one besides Marco Polo until the Age of Discovery, coming shortly after the invention of printing. This traveler also journeyed in the days before printing. His account first circulated for years in manuscript form. However, there is one thing in particular that distinguished John Mandeville from Marco Polo. He was a fake. There was no John Mandeville, no such traveler. Nevertheless, his fake account was given credence by scholars for several centuries and became the basis for many beliefs about the East. He was an inspiration to others. Columbus read his account before heading off for the East, only to find America instead. Whoever wrote as Mandeville gathered his information from other sources, so it wasn't all a myth. However, the writer did embellish what he learned elsewhere with his imagination. Mandeville's supposed journey took him to places like the Holy Land, Egypt, Persia, Turkey, India and China. His descriptions were accepted because there were no others in Europe at the time to contradict his words. Item 9 is an early Italian edition of Mandeville's travels, Itinerarius: Tractato de la pui Maravegliose cose e pui notabile che si trovino In le parte del mondo, published in Bologna, 4 July 1488. $65,000.

One of the lands supposedly visited by Mandeville and sought by Polo was that of Prester John. The legend began around 1165 with a letter purportedly sent to Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos from Prester John. He was supposedly a descendant of one of the three Magi, a Christian Monarch in India, which at the time could be anywhere in Asia or Africa. Eventually, this India came to be associated with Ethiopia, it being a Christian area since earlier days. Columbus was among those who looked for the mythical figure on his journeys. Item 5 is the first Latin edition of the legend, De ritu et moribus Indorum, published c. 1479-82. It had first been published in Italian in 1478 but this is the earliest obtainable edition. $85,000.

Next is the Etymologiae of Isidorus Hispalensis (Isidore of Seville). Published in 1472, thanks to the invention of printing, it was written much earlier, almost a millennium (Isidore died in 636). He was a Hispano-Roman scholar, remembered for his Etymologiae. It is an encyclopedia of knowledge (not always correct) of his time, relied on long after his time. Printing and the Mind of Man described it as “of infinitely greater importance” than the contemporary incunable encyclopedias despite it having been written so many centuries earlier. It has also been described as “arguably the most influential book, after the Bible, in the learned world of the Latin West for nearly a thousand years.” Learning was limited in the West in the period from Isidore's life to the advent of printing, also known as the “Dark Ages.” The book contains the first printed map of the world, the “T-O” map. This very crude map has a letter “T” in a circle. Above the “T” is Asia, to each side Europe and America. It would be hard to find directions using this map, but map making had to start somewhere. Item 2. $450,000.

Item 3 is an unusual letter. It was written by Pope Pius II in 1461 to Mehmed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. It probably was never sent, and it wasn't published until several years after the Pope's death. It was likely meant as propaganda as Pius II was trying to organize Europe in another Crusade. Evidently, Pius did not know that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. The Ottomans had captured Constantinople a few years earlier and Pius was devoted to getting it back. In his letter, the Pope encourages the Sultan to convert to Christianity, which he certainly must have realized was a hopeless cause. Pius died in 1464 while still trying to organize a Crusade that never happened. While his dream was not realized, Pope Pius II was still a noted scholar and writer, recognized as “one of the greatest representatives of humanism of his age.” $30,000.

You can reach Peter Harrington at +44 (0)20 7591 0220 or mail@peterharrington.co.uk.