See- und Landreise nach Ostindien und Aegypten, auf die Berge Sinai und Horeb, nach Gaza, Rama, Damascus, Sydon, Tyrus, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, nach dem todten Meere u.s.w. in den Jahren 1795–1799. Von Joseph Schrödter

12mo. f. [1] (blank), pp. viii, 358, f. [1] (blank). Contemporary boards, uncut. Manuscript spine title and front cover label numbered 22 on pasted paper panels. Title page has square cut below imprint (removed signature?) and erased stamp.

The second of three fictitious first-person travelogues, all by the mysterious hack and possibly pseudonymous Zacharias Taurinius, issued under different names and for three Leipzig publishers between 1799 and 1801 (for the first one, see Bib# 4103014/Fr# 1419, for the last one, see Bib# 4103015/Fr# 1421). The present copy is the only edition of this ‘Taurinius’ travel forgery, ascribed to a shoemaker named Joseph Schroedter (1800), describing his travel in the Near and Middle East and India, and his capture at sea by the English off Pondicherry. Although confessing to the other forgeries (see Bib#4103015/Fr# 1421), Taurinius maintained that Schoedter was a real person, a semiliterate native of Hamburg whose narrative he had merely ghostwritten. For a good account of the hoax, for a long time a credited source of information about the Dark Continent, see R. J. Howgego, Encyclopedia of exploration: invented and apocryphal narratives of travel. Potts Point, New South Wales, 2013, D2(a).

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