Title page of Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot... (1877)

Title page of the second edition of Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot during the Insurrection, August and September 1875 (1876; 2nd edn., 1877) by Arthur Evans, an account of his journey through the troubled region in the summer of 1875.

Author: Arthur John Evans (‘Arthur J. Evans’)
Title of book: Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot during the Insurrection, August and September 1875
Publisher: Longmans, Green, and Co.
Place of publication: London
Date of publication: 1877
Edition: Second edition (‘revised and enlarged’); first edition published in 1876
Acquisition: Henry Balfour. Bequeathed February 1939

***

Exhibition caption: ‘Displayed here are drawings and ink sketches made by Arthur Evans while travelling with his brother through Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer of 1875. They show people and places encountered by the pair on a route south from Agram (modern-day Zagreb) – via Tešanj, Sarajevo and Mostar – to Ragusa (Dubrovnik), which Evans and his wife were later to make their home. The illustrations demonstrate a particular interest in identity and dress, Evans writing, for example, of finding “two Bulgarians hard at work tying up bundles of onions, clad in their dark national costume – the brown tight-sleeved jacket embroidered with black, the dull red sash, the brown trowser-leggings which are equally Turkish and Tartar and on their head the black sheepskin cap which had at first attracted my attention.” As well as being an aide-mémoire, the drawings provided the basis for engravings published in Evans’ account of his journey, Through Bosnia and the Herzegóvina on Foot during the Insurrection, August and September 1875 (London, 1876). As an eyewitness account of a distant region in turmoil, the book was an immediate success, quoted extensively in Parliament, and it went into a second edition the following year. This copy was previously owned by Henry Balfour, Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum.’ Source: ‘Travels in Finland and Bosnia-Herzegovina: An Ethnographic Collection of Sir Arthur Evans’, exhibition curated by Philip Grover, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 29 April to 1 September 2013.