Mani. Travels in the Southern Peloponnese

Patrick Leigh Fermor. Photographs by Joan Eyres Monsell. Jacket and frontispiece by John Craxton.

John Murray. London. 1958. First edition. Hardback, octavo; red cloth-bound boards with gilt title and motif, Book Society edition (1958) dust jacket. xviii, 320 pages. Colour jacket, frontispiece and title-page device by Craxton; 25 b&w photographic plates by Eyres Monsell; sketch map by John Woodcock. English. 220 x 150mm. 0.6kg. . Near fine, in near fine dust jacket; slight wear to top edge of jacket, some small scratches to spine, not price-clipped, no inscriptions.

Patrick Leigh Fermor's travel book on the Mani penisula in southern Greece. Leigh Fermor visited the area in the 1950s with his future wife Joan Eyres Monsell and Xan Fielding. The book's focus is on the geography of the area, as well as 'digressions on religion, icons, superstitions, history and mythology'. Whilst his companions are little present in the text, Eyres Monsell's photographs richly illustrate the book. After their marriage the couple built a magnificent house in the Mani which is now owned by the Benaki Musuem. John Craxton, who shared an affinity with Leigh Fermor for Greece and illustrated a number of his books, supplied the jacket and frontispiece design.