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[Middle East] [Lesseps, Ferdinand De], Fontane, Marius. Le Canal Maritime de Suez Illustre. Histoire du Canal et des Travaux par M. Marius Fontane. Itinéraire de l’Isthme par M. Riou. Paris: Aux Bureaux de l’Illustration, 1869. Slim 4to. Contemporary half morocco. All edges marbled. 191 pages. Ninety-seven full-page engravings in the text, some double-page. Five autographed letters tipped in at the rear, two signed by Ferdinand de Lesseps. Outer joints rubbed, one-inch stain affecting approximately fifteen pages, one letter with 3-inch closed cut, slight browning throughout. Very good. First Edition, published to commemorate the inauguration of the Suez Canal in the same year, and inscribed and dated that year to J. E. Nourse on the front free endpaper. This copy of Le Canal Maritime de Suez associates the Frenchmen Ferdinand de Lesseps and Marius Fontane with the American Joseph Everett Nourse. . Nourse (1819-1889), a professor, chaplain and officer in the United States Navy, authored his own book on the Canal, The Maritime Canal of Suez . . . ., in the same year as Fontane’s. It is clear from the five autograph letters tipped in at the rear of this copy that Nourse was sympathetic to the French efforts in the Suez, and that he must have obtained useful information for his book from Lesseps and Fontane. In one letter dated in 1867, Lesseps agrees to sell 1,000 copies of one of the Company’s maps of the Suez to Nourse for use in his book, and expresses gratitude for Nourse’s efforts to popularize the Suez project in the United States. In another letter, Fontane offers a detailed rebuttal of an article, sent to him by Nourse, criticizing the project in the New York Journal of Commerce. He goes on to defend the transit fees charged by the Company as being offset by the economy realized over passage by the Cape of Good Hope, and to cite the large number of ships which had already made passages through the Canal by mid-1870. Le Canal Maritime de Suez, commemorating “one of the most significant political and engineering achievements of the [19th] century” (Id.), is scarce in any condition and is offered here in a unique association copy. Ibrahim-Hilmy I, p. 235. Not in Atabey or Brunet (who lists only a later work by Fontane).
Provenance: Joseph Everett Nourse, by presentation inscription.
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