8vo. vi, 402 pp., original blind stamped cloth, faded and rubbed round edges, title gilt on spine, publisher’s ‘companion to the communion’ slip tipped in at rear, small marginal tears to 4 leaves without any loss tot text, occasional foxing, James Burns, first & only edition, 1839.

Synopsis

Joseph Wolff (1795 – 1862) was a Jewish Christian missionary and oriental scholar who pursued his studies in Tubingen and Rome. He travelled widely, and was known as the Eccentric Missionary, according to Fitzroy Maclean’s Eastern Approaches.
In 1821 he began his missionary wanderings in the East by visiting Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, Jerusalem, Aleppo, Mesopotamia, Persia, Tiflis and the Crimea, returning to England in 1826.
In 1828 Wolff set out to search for the ten tribes, travelling through Anatolia, Armenia, Turkestan and Afghanistan to Simla and Calcutta, suffering many hardships but preaching with enthusiasm. He visited Madras, Pondicherry, Tinnevelly, Goa and Bombay, travelling home by Egypt and Malta. In 1836 he found Samuel Gobat in Abyssinia, took him to Jeddah, and himself visited Yemen and Bombay, going on to the United States, where he was ordained deacon in 1837, and priest in 1838. In the same year he was given the rectory of Linthwaite in Yorkshire.
In 1843 Wolff went to Bukhara to seek two British officers, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Stoddart and Captain Arthur Conolly who had been executed by the Emir of Bukhara, Nasrullah Khan in June 1842. Wolff himself narrowly escaped the death on account of, as he later described, of the Emir laughing uncontrollably at the appearance of Wolff in full canonical garb. His Narrative of this mission went through seven editions between 1845 and 1852. In 1845 he was presented to the vicarage of Ile Brewers, Somerset and was planning another great missionary tour when he died on the May 2, 1862.
He published several journals of his expeditions, especially Travels and Adventures of Joseph Wolff (2 volumes, London, 1860).