Author: kfrieden

Professor since 1986. Also clarinetist and comedian. I spent the first part of my career trying to prove that I was a serious guy. Now I have to undo the damage.

1818 HEBREW BOOK RECOVERED!

kfriedenLeave a comment

The only complete copy of Mendel Lefin’s Sea Voyages from 1818!

Lefin's SEA VOYAGES tp

Until now, the National Library of Israel had the only known copy, missing 16 pages, and a reprint from 1859. Recently I discovered a second copy of the original edition that had been catalogued in Vienna under the wrong author’s name and with a garbled title. This complete first edition is now freely available at

https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=JyZiAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA1

Some bibliographers have thought that this book was written by Meir Letteris rather than by Mendel Lefin, but Letteris corrected this mistake in Zikkaron be-sefer (1869), p. 39 n. See also my Travels in Translation, p. 235.