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Cave, Henry W..
The Ruined Cities of Ceylon.
Publisher: Sampson Low, Marston and Company Ltd, London;
Date of Publication: 1900
Stock Code: 14683
Revised edition, after the 1897 first edition, with three plates not found in the first. Demy quarto, pp., 15, [1], 165, [1], 6 of index, 1 of publisher’s advertisements, [1], plus frontispiece, map of the region, and 65 full-page photographs by the author, as called for. Publisher’s original quarter black leather over olive green calf on beveled boards, titled in gilt to spine, ornamental vignette in gilt to upper board; top edge gilt; marbled end-papers. Neat contemporary ownership inscription in ink to title-page ‘Gillie[?] Ramsay // Colombo 1903’. Spine slightly sunned,, corners lightly bumped. Unobtrusive foxing to fire and bottom-edges, occasionally affecting a small number of plates. Despite the foxing to the edges of the text-block a fresh copy. An early photographic work on the ruined cities of what is now Sri Lanka. Cave was a printer, publisher, bookbinder, author, photographer, and amateur archaeologist whose business operated in Sri Lanka in the latter half of the nineteenth-century. He wrote extensively on the region and took over seventy voyages to the island in the course of his life, taking thousands of photographs. £185.00