Trois ans en Asie

First edition.
Contemporary half red shagreen binding. Spine with raised bands decorated with 4 fleurons in blind-tooled compartments. Author, title and date in gilt. Top edge gilt. Fresh paper (a few rare pale foxing marks).
Handsome copy.
In December 1854, Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882), then first secretary at the Frankfurt legation, was appointed secretary to an extraordinary mission to Persia, led by minister Prosper Bourée and ordered by Emperor Napoleon III. On the way to Persia, Gobineau traveled through Malta, Egypt and the countries of the Arabian peninsula. The second part of Trois ans en Asie is certainly the richest part of this work, a mine of information on Persian society of that period. Animated by the same enthusiasm for Persia, Gobineau would publish, in 1864, Religions et philosophies dans l'Asie centrale, then, in 1869, a Histoire des Perses and finally, between 1872 and 1874, his collection of six Nouvelles Asiatiques.