?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(ARCHAEOLOGY.) Diary and personal papers of Charles Wesley Bradley of the Assos Expedition in Turkey. 0.25 linear feet, various sizes and conditions. Diary: 253 pages plus 4 pages of related memoranda. 12mo, original calf, covers detached; contents complete, clean and legible, a few pages loose. Related papers: approximately 400 leaves, a few quite worn at edges. Vp, 1870-83
Boston native Charles Wesley Bradley (1857-1884) was an 1880 graduate of Harvard. The next year he volunteered to assist in the excavation of the ancient Greek city of Assos in Turkey with Francis H. Bacon and the Archaeological Institute of America. He returned to the United States in 1882, but he never fully recovered from malaria contracted during the expedition, and died in 1884. His Harvard obituary noted that "he was a close observer, and his descriptions . . . were graceful, vigorous, and full of color." The heart of this collection is the 1881 diary Bradley kept during the Assos expedition. The diary begins with his departure from Boston on 31 March, after which he arrives in Turkey on 5 May, and in Assos on 11 May. On 16 May the party was visited by the renowned German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, whom Bradley quotes at great length. The party subsisted mainly on bread and cheese, not taking well to the Turkish diet. Bradley was an evocative writer, describing a swarm of locusts (3 June), a nightly onslaught of bedbugs and fleas, and sailing a small vessel to a nearby Greek island for supplies despite "knowing very little about a boat" (26 May). While finding himself lost in the mountains one night, he wrote "The light of human heroism has rested in these hills . . . one could not feel the chill of desolation in their companionship" (7 June). With all of his adventures, Bradley was able to spend little time at the site. A typical day of surveying: "Arrived at the top of the mountain. Max finds he has forgotten the pins. I go down for them. Arrived a second time. Max finds he has forgotten a number of things. It is now dinner time, and we decide to put off surveying until some other day when Max's memory is better" (14 June). His diary concludes on 24 June with a long reverie about his Harvard days. This archive also includes drafts of numerous articles Bradley wrote about the Assos expedition and its related travels: a 44-page notebook and approximately 200 loose leaves, with titles like "Archaeological Discoveries in Phrygia" and "A Provincial Town in Turkey." Some of these works were published in the New York Times and elsewhere. Rounding out the collection are a four leaves from Bradley's September 1882 diary during his return passage; a folder of Bradley's juvenile work from 1870 to 1875; and a folder of Bradley's other later manuscripts (poetry, philosophy, and an Adirondack travel piece). This collection provides useful documentation of an important expedition, and makes for very lively travel reading.
Exhibition Hours
Exhibition Hours
Aliquam vulputate ornare congue. Vestibulum maximus, libero in placerat faucibus, risus nisl molestie massa, ut maximus metus lectus vel lorem.
