Why it matters

Laborde travelled to Petra in 1828 with the engineer Linant de Bellefonds, and the resulting Paris folio of 1830 was the work that gave Europe its first substantial visual record of the site; Murray's 1836 octavo is the first English translation of that narrative. Its plates and folding map put Petra, Sinai and the Edom of the prophecies in front of an English readership at the height of Victorian interest in biblical geography.

Why we're looking

An early English Petra narrative in its original publisher's cloth, with the folding map and the great majority of the plates present, asked at roughly $162 against the $270-plus range visible for comparable copies of the same edition. The Richmond College bookplate and contemporary signatures give it a documented institutional/private history rather than an anonymous copy.

Watch out for

The seller states the copy is collated and lacks the plate opposite page 170 — a dealer collation of another copy calls for 24 plates (13 wood-engraved, 11 lithographed) plus 2 maps and the title vignette, consistent with the seller's count before the missing leaf. Structurally it is fragile: cloth split at both joints, strained hinges and a binding described as slightly tender, so it may need a box or sympathetic repair. Worth asking for images of the folding map unfolded, since folding maps in tender bindings are the usual casualty and the listing does not describe its condition specifically.

Note: The seller also has this copy listed on AbeBooks (as Rooke Books, Bath) for £245. A second Murray edition appeared in 1838, so confirm the title page reads 1836 before treating it as the first English translation.