Lieutenant Vincent Eyre · Publisher: London: John Murray · 1843

The Military Operations at Cabul

USD 1,150

Which Ended in the Retreat and Destruction of the British Army, January 1842. With a Journal of Imprisonment in Affghanistan.

The editor notes that the final pages of Lieutenant Eyre's journal were lost from his pocket during his march toward India and only arrived a "short time since". He states that this text is now issued as a "Supplement" so that purchasers of the original volume can "have their book complete". An earlier (incomplete) edition was printed before this missing manuscript section was recovered and integrated into the text block. The presence of this editorial notice and the supplemental material makes this the first complete edition of the book.In a true first edition of The Military Operations at Cabul from 1843, the main text ends on page 328, whereas this edition onwards, additional pages and sections make the book complete.

First published in early 1843, Lieutenant Vincent Eyre’s The Military Operations at Cabul stands as the definitive, harrowing eyewitness account of one of the greatest military disasters in the history of the British Empire: the 1842 Retreat from Kabul during the First Anglo-Afghan War.Serving as a British officer and commissary of ordnance in the Bengal Artillery, Eyre was trapped within the poorly fortified Kabul cantonment. He bore direct witness to the political paralysis and strategic blunders that culminated in Major-General William Elphinstone’s catastrophic decision to evacuate the garrison. Eyre’s text provides a vivid, visceral chronicle of the subsequent retreat, wherein a column of 16,500 soldiers, camp followers, women, and children was systematically annihilated by freezing winter conditions and relentless Afghan tribal marksmen in the narrow mountain passes.Forced to surrender as a hostage to Akbar Khan along with a small group of married officers and their families, Eyre spent nine months in captivity. During this imprisonment, he maintained a clandestine diary under penalty of death. This manuscript was secretly smuggled out of his cell in small fragments, hidden inside the clothing of sympathetic couriers, and forwarded to friends in British India who dispatched it to London for publication.

Bibliographical Significance:

This copy represents the first complete edition, which is highly notable for its bibliographical evolution. Unlike the uncorrected first edition (which ended abruptly on page 328), this expanded version contains the highly sought-after "Notice by the Editor" and the integrated text supplement. The editor explains that the concluding pages of Eyre's journal had been dropped from his pocket on the march toward India and were "lost—irretrievably as he thought." Their subsequent recovery and arrival in London allowed Murray to append the missing text, alongside Captain Mackenzie's appendix and Lieutenant Crawford's account of the siege and captivity at Ghazni, resulting in the expanded 426-page text block.Eyre's text remains an invaluable primary source for nineteenth-century military history, Victorian orientalism, and the geopolitics of the "Great Game." It offered the mid-Victorian public a raw, unvarnished critique of British administrative hubris that permanently altered domestic perceptions of imperial expansion in Central Asia.

Edition

First Complete Edition

Condition

Octavo (8vo), pp. xvi, 426. Issued without the lithographic portrait plates found in select deluxe variants of the later editions.Illustrations: Complete with the original lithographed folding plan titled "Plan of the Cantonment and the Surrounding Country" by Vincent Eyre. Binding: Custom contemporary Victorian half-leather binding (not cloth as noted in some descriptions, showing a dark blue/black calf or sheep leather spine and corners) paired with beautifully figured marbled paper-covered boards. The spine features raised bands, decorative gilt tooling in compartments, and a red leather title label. All text block edges are elaborately marbled to match the boards. Condition: Very Good. The binding is tight, firm, and square, showing minor cosmetic shelf wear and slight rubbing along the joints, spine ends, and board edges. Internally remarkably clean and crisp with very little of the usual Victorian foxing. The large folding map is intact and firmly attached, showing a minor closed tear near the attachment stub not affecting the main plan imagery. Map: Includes the original folding lithographed plan of the Kabul cantonment. The map is intact and attached, with only a slight closed tear in one corner, not affecting the main illustration. Tear is at position of tip of middle finder in photo 15.

Status

Available