SET OF 2 BOOKS ON DELHI

• Charles John Griffiths, A Narrative of the Siege of Delhi with an Account of the Mutiny at Ferozepore in 1857, London: John Murray, 1910

xii + 260 pages including 8 pages of maps and illustrations
8.75 x 5.5 in (22.5 x 14 cm)

A truthful account of events as the author claims in which he personally participated and which happened under his own immediate observation. The great Indian rebellion, he states, was an epoch fraught with the most momentous consequences when no power on earth could save them as Hindus and Mohammedans united to drive them out.

“The ever memorable period in the history of our Eastern Empire known as the Great Indian Rebellion or Mutiny of the Bengal army was an epoch fraught with the most momentous consequences, and one which resulted in covering with undying fame those who bore part in its suppression. The passions aroused during the struggle, the fierce hate animating the breasts of the combatants, the deadly incidents of the strife, which without intermission lasted for nearly two years, and deluged with blood the plains and cities of Hindostan, have scarcely a parallel in history. On the one side religious fanaticism, when Hindoo and Mohammedan, restraining the bitter animosity of their rival creeds, united together in the attempt to drive out of their common country that race which for one hundred years had dominated and held the overlordship of the greater portion of India. On the other side, a small band of Englishmen, a few thousand white men among millions of Asiatics, stood shoulder to shoulder, calm, fearless, determined, ready to brave the onslaught of their enemies, to maintain with undiminished lustre the proud deeds of their ancestors, and to a man resolved to conquer or to die.” - Introduction

• Robert B Minturn Jr., From New York to Delhi, by way of Rio de Janeiro, Australia, and China, New York: D. Appleton & Co, 1858

488, [5] pp., folding map in colour of India; brown cloth stamped in blind and titled in gilt.
8 x 5 in (20.5 x 13 cm)

First American Edition, the second edition overall; the first was published in London in the same year, and a third in New York and London in 1859.

Minturn (1805-66) was a wealthy merchant and philanthropist in New York City. A partner in one of New York's greatest nineteenth-century commercial houses, he owned several clipper ships and did much business in England, China and Cuba. This book, composed largely from letters to his family, describes a six-month tour of India just before the Mutiny (discussed pp. 470-84), with chapters on Calcutta, Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpoor, Lucknow, Meeruth, Delhi, Agra, Jaipoor, Rajpootana, Ellora, and Bombay, as well as on India's wealth, climate, military and government under the British. Other chapters cover Rio de Janeiro, Australia, North and South China (pp. 37-84), the Himalayas and Cairo.

(Set of two)

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