BURTON, Richard Francis, Sir (1821-1890). Sindh, and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus; With Notices of the Topography and History of the Province. London: Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1851.

8vo (215 x 135 mm). Folding engraved frontispiece map printed on light blue paper, linen-backed and tipped-in. (Some toning and minor soiling.) 20th-century brown half morocco, raised bands ruled in silver, red morocco lettering-piece gilt (rebound without publisher's advertisements as pastedowns). Provenance: Athenaeum (blue stamp to lower left of map, evidence of effaced institutional stamps to title-page and p. [1].)

FIRST EDITION of Burton’s detailed study of the annexed Sindh province, present-day Pakistan, based on his 5 years in the region while serving in the East India Company army. “His third book, was long-term the most successful of Burton’s Indian quartet. It was a brilliant, scholarly, imaginative work of ethnology - the work that first revealed Burton as a highly talented anthropologist” (McLynn, p.54). Penzer, p. 40 (“very rare”); Spink 5.

Property from the Collection of Robert S. Brown, Cincinnati, Ohio