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Knox, Robert.
An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, in the East-Indies: Together, With an ACCOUNT of the Detaining in Captivity the Author and divers other Englishmen now Living there, and of the Author's Miraculous ESCAPE. Illustrated with figures, and a Map of the ISLAND - Henry Cave’s Copy.
Publisher: Printed by Richard Chiswell, Printer to the Royal Society, at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul’s Church-yard. London;
Date of Publication: 1681
Stock Code: 14272
Large quarto, pp., [28], 189, [7], plus 15 plates, and one double-page map of Ceylon, with the initial license-to-print leaf and the advertising leaf to end. Lacks the portrait (as usual) but otherwise complete. Rebound in black leather (possibly morocco), gilt rules and ornaments to borders of boards, gilt rules in compartments and titled to spine, marbled endpapers, all edges speckled red. Binders ticket of H. W. Cave & Co. Colombo to end. Ownership inscription of Henry Cave, dated 1900 (i.e. the author and bookbinder H. W. Cave) to front free end-paper, and inscription of one R. G. Edwards, M. D. dated Jan 1846 to blank leaf to fore. Corners slightly bumped, and binding rubbed. Unobtrusive paper repair to verso of some plates and bottom margin of some leaves, loss to corner p. 72 not affecting text, some soling and scattered foxing throughout. Staining tA very good copy. The first book in English on what is now Sri Lanka, and one of Defoe’s sources for Robinson Crusoe. Knox and his father sailed, under orders of the English Protectorate, to establish trade with the Dutch-colonized island. After failing to bribe the indigenous ruler of Ceylon, the pair were captured and remained in captivity for 19 years. Knox published this volume following his escape. As his biographer describes, Knox’s eyewitness account of the society, culture, and economy of the Sinhalese people was ‘a fundamental source for the economic history and anthropology of mid-seventeenth-century Ceylon’. An invaluable record of the island, the book made Knox famous; it was the cause of his friendship with the polymath Robert Hooke (1635 – 1703) of the Royal Society and the book was a major primary source for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.
This copy was bound and owned by H. W. Cave, printer, publisher, bookbinder, author, photographer, and amateur archaeologist whose business operated in Sri Lanka in the latter half of the nineteenth-century. Between 1903 and 1908, Cave wrote extensively on Sri Lanka, relying, much like Knox, on his own eyewitness accounts of the island. In his influential and popular ‘Golden Tips: A Description of Ceylon and its Tea Industry’ (1900), Cave quotes from Knox and describes his experience of captivity (pp., 89, 416-417). As Cave’s ownership inscription to this volume and the publication date of his best known work are both 1900 it seems highly likely that this copy of Knox’s Historical Relation was the one Cave had to hand when writing his most famous work. A rare work, often lacking the map of Ceylon, and here with both a superlative provenance and associated binding.
£4000.00