Beschreibung:

LEFFINGWELL, ALBERT TRACY. An archive of manuscripts, books, and photographs relating to his extensive travels in Japan, 1881-82, and the book based upon his notes. AN AMERICAN'S WANDERINGS IN JAPAN, 1881 [Books:] TRACY, ALBERT, Pseudonym . Rambles Through Japan Without a Guide, London 1892, 12mo, original decorated cloth, rubbed, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S COPY, the titlepage signed by him and inscribed: "Author's private property," pasted to rear endpaper is a specimen page of the book labeled by Leffingwell -- LEFFINGWELL, ALBERT. Rambles Through Japan Without a Guide, New York, 1894, 12mo, quarter brown morocco, spine and upper cover gilt-lettered "Author's Copy," frontispiece portrait boldly signed by Leffingwell, AUTHOR'S COPY, EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED WITH 19 ORIGINAL ALBUMEN PHOTOGRAPHS, most delicately hand-tinted, showing geishas, finely-dressed noblewomen, workmen and landscapes, several with handwritten captions by the author, a double-page map inserted on which Leffingwell's travels are indicated in red, plus 36 pages of mounted clippings of reviews of the book bound at back. [Manuscripts:] "Original Notebooks of my "Rambles in Japan, Summer of 1881," six notebooks titled "Japan Notes, III-VIII," each labelled in ink on upper cover by Leffingwell and containing his journals in Japan for the period 9 August through 10 October 1881, together 392 pages, closely written in pencil in six 12mo notebooks, various bindings, many pages with small illustrative sketches or diagrams, one albumen photo of Hiroshima harbor inserted in notebook VII, on the envelope containing these Leffinwell explains: "The last two or three were mislaid when I wrote the book, and not included"; "English Foot-Notes," two similar notebooks, numbers I and V, dated 1875, recording Leffingwell's English travels, together 49 pages in two 12mo blank books . [Photographs:] 21 large mounted albumen photographs of Japanese landscapes and people, 212 x 270mm. (8 3/8 x 10 5/8) with margins, lengthy manuscript explanatory captions signed by Leffingwell on the versos, depicting temple scenes, landscapes, genre groups of musicians and dancing girls, etc. ; 19 carte-de-visite albumen photographs, each mounted on card, most with red borders, 14 depicting geishas or dancing girls (several with ink captions by Leffingwell on verso), one landscape and three studio portraits of Japanese men in western dress (these latter inscribed on verso by their subjects). A remarkable archive documenting the extensive travels of an educated American physician in Japan. Dr. Leffingwell's Preface states that "so far as the writer is aware, no other traveller has made the experiment of plunging into the interior, with no more acquaintance with the speech of the people than may be picked up during a fortnight in the capital, and journeying from one end of the empire to another, with neither interpreter nor guide." The book has been compiled, he explains, from his travel notes, "written by many instalments during each day, wherever a halt was made -- at wayside tea-houses, on the steps of a temple, at the foot of a shrine...such a record of experience is rather a series of mental photographs of things as they were seen...." He confesses "regarding Japanese life and manners as a phase of a real civilization," and expresses high hopes for Japan's future.