And a Detailed History of Moscow
The Character of the Russians And a Detailed History of Moscow
T. Cadell, 1823.
First edition. 4to. Original publisher's brown boards with title label to the spine. Pages uncut and unpressed. Twenty-three plates, made up of thirteen hand-coloured aquatints, including a fold-out panorama view of the Kremlin, one fold-out map, one uncoloured aquatint, nine engraved plates (two folding), as well as two wood-engravings in the text. A very good copy indeed with the spine sometime sympathetically renewed and minor repairs to the corners. Some wear to the edges. Internally, a short closed tear to the folding map, but unusually clean and fresh. A very well preserved copy.
Robert Lyall was a physician, botanist and traveller. In 1815 he was appointed physician to a nobleman in St Petersburg, graduating the following year as a doctor and surgeon at the Imperial Medico-Surgical Academy of St Petersburg.
His Character Of The Russians gives a history of Moscow from the middle ages to the rebuilding of the city following the Napoleonic invasion and fire of 1812. It further includes a catalogue of the botany of the city and its environs, as well as essays on architecture and critiques of Russian nobility and peasantry.
This last aspect "had precipitated his departure from Russia, and the book's dedication to Tsar Alexander was disavowed by the Russian vice-consul". Following the death of the Tsar, Lyall published a number of essays criticising his "despotism and the inquisitorial police state." (ODNB)
Stock ID: 36159
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