F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

A collector’s edition of this rare Folio book

Describes the First Peregrination from Paris through Italy, Greece, and the Middle East in early 1600s. The Second Peregrination is from London across Europe, through Spain, Italy, Sahara, Malta and Eastern Europe and the Third Peregrination through Ireland and Spain with his experience of the Spanish Inquisition. One of the great early travel books.

William Lithgow (c. 1582 – c. 1645) was a Scottish traveller, writer and alleged spy. He claimed at the end of his various peregrinations to have tramped 36,000 miles (57,936km) on foot.

William Lithgow was born at Lanark, the oldest son of the merchant James Lithgow and Alison Grahame, his wife. A family tradition had it that William was discovered in the company of a certain Miss Lockhart, and her four brothers cut off his ears, earning him the nickname “lugless Willie”.

Prior to 1610 he had visited Shetland, Switzerland, and Bohemia. In that year he set out from Paris for Rome on the 7 March, where he remained for four weeks before moving on to other parts of Italy: Naples, Ancona, before moving on to Athens, Constantinople, and others. After a three-month stay in Constantinople, he sailed to other Greek localities and then on to Palestine, arriving in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday 1612, and later on to Egypt.

His next journey, 1614–16, was in Tunis and Fez; but his last, 1619–21, to Spain, ended in his apprehension at Malaga and torture as a spy. He also visited Crete.

Lithgow’s major literary work is The Totall Discourse of the Rare Adventures and Painefull Peregrinations of Long Nineteene Years Travayles (1632; reprinted 1906), which, though written in a florid style, contains much cultural and economic detail. He also produced six poems about his travels and pamphlets on the siege by Frederick Henry of Orange of the Netherlands city of Breda (published 1637), on a survey of London (1643), and on the siege of Newcastle (1645) during the English Civil Wars.