Through Savage Europe

Stock No. 15128

Authors: Harry, DE WINDT (1856-1933)

Being the Narrative of a Journey (undertaken as Special Correspondent of the "Westminster Gazette"), throughout the Balkan states and European Russia
London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1907

First Edition. Demy 8vo (9 x 6 ins); 300 + 4 [publisher's adverts] pp; with 100 b/w photographic plates. Half-title (with Fisher Unwin advertisement box on verso); titlepage printed in red and black; portrait frontispiece of De Windt from a photograph by MIlan Jovanovitch of Belgrade; publisher's slip tipped-in stating the publisher's terms of sale to booksellers. Original dark blue cloth, slightly rubbed at extremities and points of the corners, with gilt title lettering to the spine and front and gilt blocked impression pof a Cossack to the front. Top edge of the pages gilt, others untrimmed. Scattered foxing throughout, mostly spots but in some areas blotching, mainly marginal though. With the Carrington armorial bookplate ("Super Invidiam"), and previous owners' signature to endpaper. Block slightly rolled. A VG+ copy,

An account of a journey through the Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Servia (sic), Bulgaria, Rumania and Russia in 1907. This was the area that was soon to experience conflict through the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, then to be the powder keg that ignited the First World War. The author was journalist and adventurer Harry de Windt, who was accompanied on his travels by a cameraman John Mackenzie to whom De Windt refers throughout: "My sole companion was Mr Mackenzie, of the Urban Bioscope Company, a canny Scotsman from Aberdeen, possessed of a keen sense of humour and of two qualities indispensable to a "bioscope" artist – assurance and activity. Nothing daunted my friend when he had once resolved to secure a "living" picture, and I trembled more than once for his safety in the vicinity of royal residences or military ground. For the bioscope was a novelty in the Balkans and might well have been mistaken for an infernal machine!"