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Guillaume Joseph Grelot : Relation nouvelle d'un voyage de Constantinople. Enrichie de Plans levez par l'Auteur sur les lieux, & des Figures de tout ce qu'il y a de plus remarquable dans cette Ville. / Presentée au Roy

Pierre Rocolet & la veuve Damien Foucault, Paris, 1680

Contemporary full calf expertly rebacked, spine in six compartments of raised blind-tooled bands, and gilt nautical motifs, gilt text on two and six, edges speckled red, endpapers renewed. , Scarce light brown spotting on pp. 119-122, p. 261 margin restored, otherwise in very good condition, text and plates are generally clean and crisp. Several plates and the title are skillfully mounted., 4to, P. blanks, title, blank, epistle (4), to the reader (5), advertisements, 1-306, (2)., With 11 copper-engraved folding or full page plates, all fine views of Constantinople. There are also four in-text copper-engravings which illustrate the several genuflexions of the Muslim daily prayer. This copy seems to be complete with 11 plates although Blackmer calls for 13 plates.

To undertake the creation of this book, Grelot employed his fluency in Turkish and "disguised himself as a Turk and thus attired travelled over the greater part of the Turkish Empire" (Cox I:213). This allowed him especially to mingle throughout Constantinople and to make sketches as he pleased. Blackmer II indicates that "Grelot made many drawings of St Sophia and other monuments, the only reasonably accurate delineations of the building for some 150 years" (146). "The work," concludes Cox, "has been reckoned to be one of the best books of travel.", Blackmer II:146; Cox I:213.

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