Voyage en divers etats d’Europe et d’Asie, do Pe. Avril, S.J. (Paris, 1692)

Voyage en divers etats d’Europe et d’Asie, do Pe. Avril, S.J. (Paris, 1692)
[AVRIL, Pe. Philippe, S.J.].- Voyage en divers etats d’Europe et d’Asie, entrepris pour découvrir un nouveau chemin à la Chine. Contenant plusieurs remarques curieuses de physique, de geographie, d’hydrographie & d’histoire. Avec une description de la grande Tartarie, et des différens peuples qui l’habitent.- A Paris: Chez Claude Barbin, Jean Boudot [et] Geroge & Louis Josse, 1692.- [20], 406, [26] p.: il.; 24 cm.- E. Original edition published without the author's name, the French Jesuit Philippe Avril (1654-1698), mathematician, missionary and diplomat. Avril was sent by Louis XIV to the emperor of China, having left Marseille in 1685 and traveled through Syria and Turkey, before arriving in Moscow in January 1687. In this city he was prevented from continuing his journey, having chosen to head to Warsaw, where he requested the intervention of King Jan III Sobieski. Having failed to reach China, Avril returned to France, where he published the present account of his travels. The work is dedicated to Prince Stanislaw Jan Jabolonowski, Grand General des Armes de Pologne, and includes his portrait, opened in copper plate, followed by the dedication with a heraldic vignette with the coat of arms of the dedicator. The text is illustrated with a fold-out map (Nouvelle carte and la Sibérie et du Kitay), three engravings and copperplate prints and five large vignettes, one at the beginning of each of the five books that make up the work: Voyage d'Orient; Tartarie Voyage; Voyage de la Chine; Moscovie Voyage; Moldavie Voyage. Copy slightly trimmed, but clean, with only a handwritten (unreadable) inscription on the title page. Contemporary binding, entirely sheepskin, very worn and dehydrated, lacking the two marbled paper flyleaves. At the end, before the index, it includes a sheet with the Privilège du Roy that we did not find described in the known copies. Provenance: Roberto Gulbenkian Library. Cordier, BS 2088.