A June 16 sale at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne included theological works from the library of Edward Tottenham (1810-53), a cleric whose parishes were in Bath and Wells.
Job lots were prominent and brought some of the higher bids, but bid to £4500 was a 1704, Exeter first of Joseph Pitts’ True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans… [and] their Pilgrimage to Mecca. In contemporary calf, it had Bath Library stamps on a few leaves.
Pitts had been enslaved when the merchantman on which he was sailing was taken by Algerian pirates and in 1680, having been forced to convert to Islam, he accompanied his new master on pilgrimage to Mecca.