TULLY Miss Voyage à Tripoli, ou Relation d’un séjour de dix années en Afrique… Traduit de l’anglais sur la seconde édition par J. Mac Carthy.

Atabey, 1243 ; Gay, 1496bis (for the French edition) & 1502 (for the original English edition); Playfair, Tripoli, 143 for the first English edition; Robinson, Wayward Women, p. 248 for the first English edition.

First edition of the French translation.

A “délicieux mélange de sujets sensationnels et de confessions impassibles” (Wayward Women).

It matters little whether the author of this work – whose name is not mentioned on the title and remains an unsolved mystery to this day – was the sister or (as stated in the preface) sister-in-law of the British consul in Tripoli, Richard Tully. Her letters, which cover the period from July 1783 to August 1793, during her ten-year stay in Tripoli, must be regarded as one of the liveliest, most eventful and astute reports written by a woman living abroad in the late eighteenth century.

Miss Tully recounts her visits to the bazaar, the mosques (located in the ‘perilous sands’ besieged by looters) and the royal family. The Turkish invasion in 1793 put an end to both the Bashaw family’s residence in Tripoli and that of the Tullys. The beautiful aquatint plates show mostly costumes. The large fold-out map illustrates the “Regencies of Tripoli and Tunis”.

Fine engravings further enliven the author’s narrative.

A very fine copy in its contemporary binding.