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RIDER HAGGARD'S COPY

CHARNAY, Désiré. The Ancient Cities of the new world. Being Travels and Explorations in Mexico and Central America From 1857-1882...

London. Chapman and Hall, 1887. First edition in English.
Large 8vo. xxxii, 514pp. With a portrait frontispiece, a folding map, and numerous illustrations in the text, many full-page. Original publisher's pictorial navy cloth. Lightly rubbed, a trifle cocked. Later pencilled notes to verso of FFEP, foxed. Pencilled ownership inscription of H. Rider Haggard to half-title, small sheet of heraldic drawings, purportedly by Haggard, tipped-in.
Adventure fiction writer H. Rider Haggard's (1856-1925) copy of the first edition in English of French explorer and archaeologist Désiré Charnay's (1828-1915) account of his travels in Central America.

The later pencilled notes and loosely inserted typed bookseller's description, claim that Haggard use this volume as the source book for the description of the city of Khor in Ayesha, his sequel to She. Though this cannot be substantiated, it is probably that the book at least in part provided inspiration for Haggard's 1895 novel, Heart of the World, concerning a lost Mayan city in Mexico.
£ 450.00 Antiquates Ref: 32688