L’Inde Pittoresque: Madras

P J Auguste Urbain, L’Inde Pittoresque: Madras, Paris: Dauvin et Fontaine, 1840

260 pages including 25 later hand-coloured steel engravings out of text, from original drawings by Daniell; full leather binding with decorative design border on the front and back boards and spine gilt text at the spine, all edges gilt
10 x 6.5 in (25.5 x 17 cm)

This book is the French translation by P J Auguste Urbain of the famous periodical The Oriental Annual, or Scenes in India. The name of the John Hobart Caunter placed in the title page of two volumes should not delude us: certainly, the respectable clergyman was a collaborator of The Oriental Annual between 1834 and 1840.

Caunter "went to India about 1810 as a cadet with the 34th foot, but was soon disgusted with his situation and, 'having discovered, much to his disappointment, nothing on the continent of Asia to interest him', he returned home. He recorded his impressions of India in a poem entitled The Cadet (2 vols., 1814)...Caunter was well known in London as a fashionable preacher and was a minor author and poet of some substance. India remained a preoccupation, treated in several volumes including India (3 vols., 1836) (part of the Romance of History series). He published five volumes entitled The Oriental Annual of Science (1834-8). Caunter's other works include The Island Bride, a poem in six cantos (1830); The Fellow Commoner, a novel (3 vols., 1836); St Leon: a Drama (1835); and several works of theology" (H. C. G. Matthew for DNB).

The fine plates in the present lot are after painter and draftsman William Daniell who initially accompanied his uncle painter Thomas Daniell to India between 1786 and 1793 as soon as he reached the age of fourteen. On his return to London in 1794, Daniell spent the next fifteen years working on the aquatints for their joint work Oriental Scenery published in six volumes between 1795-1808. The plates reproduced here are transcriptions of the colourised aquatints published from these volumes.

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