AEW

"The voyage on the ‘Amazone’ was something akin to the travels of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) published only the year before in 1889. Our work has six travellers, two women, one of whom is our artist as shown in a leaf of portraits at the opening of the work, and four men partly for company but also to do the rowing. The grandly titled ‘Amazone’ in which they travelled looks very like a Thames skiff and the rather odd name we conjecture may be taken after the ‘Amazones of the Seine’, as that ‘rabble’ of female communards were disparagingly called during the Paris siege of 1870/71. The trip entailed some keen rowing which was conducted over ten days from the end of July into the first week of August, 1890. All the usual problems occur, losing half their luggage, fraternizing with the natives, admiring the scenery, playing dominoes, drinking coffee and taking care in stopping off overnight at various comfortable hotels. Clearly something of an adventure, the unknown artist, who signs herself ‘E.W.A’ on the title, records the towns, scenery, people and ‘characters’ on their voyage which began at Asnières-sur-Seine and ended, after a short detour on the Eure tributary, at Rouen. By the 1890’s the anastatic process was beginning to look outdated and Cowell’s of Ipswich took the expedient of transferring the images to the more adaptable half-tone process when printing off this charming work. Not in OCLC, and as far as we are aware, unrecorded." (Pickering & Chatto, cat. 799, lot 1). COPAC lists a copy at the BL (RB.23.b.7696).… (mehr)