GROVES (Anthony N.)

Journal of a Residence at Bagdad.

A LOVELY UNSOPHISTICATED COPY.

First edition. 8vo. Publisher’s quarter cloth over boards, original paper label to spine, rear hinge starting but holding fine, ownership inscription to the front free endpaper. Housed in a custom green cloth clamshell box. xv, [1], 306, 2ads.pp. London, James Nisbet, 1832.

£4,500.00

An excellent unsophisticated copy with the half-title. Groves had received training in dentistry and medicine, though by 1829 decided to dedicate his life to missionary work. He is perhaps best known as a founder of the Plymouth Brethren. This work is an account of his first voyage abroad.

ODNB summarises the author’s eventful, and rather tragic, time in Iraq: “On 12 June 1829 Groves, accompanied by his wife and family, John Kitto, and others, sailed for St Petersburg. He then travelled overland, and on 6 December entered Baghdad, where he took up residence as a teacher of Christianity. Working with Karl Gottlieb Pfander, the pietist missionary scholar, he helped the poor with his surgical knowledge, established an Arabic school, and made attempts at the conversion of the Jewish residents. In 1831, his second year in Baghdad, the plague appeared; half of the population died within two months, including Mary Groves, who died on 14 May, and their baby daughter. In June, Baghdad was besieged by the pasha of Mosul, and Groves, already ill with typhus fever, was now in danger from the soldiers of losing his life.” Groves later moved to India, where he spent most of the next twenty years.

This copy was owned by Robert Haldane, a Scottish Protestant clergyman with a similar evangelical zeal to Groves. Haldane is best known as the founder the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Home.

The last copy to appear on the market was the Brooke-Hitching copy in 2014, which made £10,000.

Stock No.
227859