Three Months Passed in the Mountains East of Rome, During the Year 1819

London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; and Edinburgh: A. Constable, 1820, 1820. First edition. Pine-Coffin 819-3; Robinson, Wayward Women, pages 44-45; see the ODNB. Edges slightly rubbed; some light foxing; very good copy in contemporary state.. 8vo, original gray boards skillfully rebacked, recent printed paper label, untrimmed. Frontispiece and five plates after sketches by Charles Eastlake. With errata, directions for the binder and four pages of advertisements between the front endpapers for the Literary Gazette, dated June 20, 1820. A travel narrative revealing of the adventurous and fearless nature of its author, Maria Graham (1785-1842). In the summer of 1819, she, her husband and the artist Charles Eastlake ventured into the mountains east of Rome, to the villages of Poli, near Tivoli and Palestrina, to escape the heat, but where it was known that the roads and locales were controlled by the dreaded banditti. Foreigners were discouraged from visiting this region and that apparently appealed to Maria Graham, who for a summer documented the local history, the personalities and nature of the people who were considered bandits, and she managed to do it unscathed. This was the third of five travel narratives by Graham, which established her as a bona fide travel writer, as opposed to a writer of a single travelogue. She had previously published two accounts of her travels in India; Brazil and Chile would be her next far-flung destinations. Contemporary bookplate on the front paste-down, below which is the modern bookplate of author Larry McMurtry. This is a duplicate from his collection of books by women travelers.