Cosmography, in Four Books. Containing the chorography and history of the whole world, and all the principal kingdoms, provinces, seas, and isles thereof
London: Philip Chetwind, 1670. Very Good. Item #25204
London: Philip Chetwind, 1670. "Revised, Corrected, and Inlarged [sic] by the Author himself immediately before his Death." Folio (34cm.); modern half sheep over marbled boards, gilt-lettered spine in six compartments, retaining original endpapers; [12],1095,[44]pp. (collated complete, collation available upon request); steel-engraved frontispiece and added title page printed in red and black, four (of five) folding plates bearing the imprint of Philip Chetwind, 1666; woodcut initials, head- and tail-pieces throughout.
Leather a bit scuffed at extremities, textblock unevenly browned and a bit brittle, long closed tear to leaf [X4], else a Very Good copy, albeit lacking the World Map. Front free endpaper also boasts the ownership signature of a Ri[chard?] Lewis, 1672, and the bold inscription "Stephen & Mary Jackson Their Book the 1st of the 8th month 1737" below which is added in the same hand "Given by the above said Stephn. Jackson, To Eliz. Mearsh." Stephen has also added an earlier (1736) ownership inscription upside down on rear free endpaper by accident.
Updated posthumous edition of the hugely popular and influential work by the English clergyman and historian Peter Heylyn (1599-1662). Shortly after graduating from Oxford Heylyn, nicknamed "the perpetual dictator," began lecturing on geography and by 1621, at the age of twenty-two, had already published "Microcosmus: A Little Description of the Great World," which proved to be the seed of this enormous volume. The first edition of "Cosmography" appeared after the Civil Wars in 1652 and was "sufficiently well regarded that the council of state saw fit to obtain a copy for their better instruction." The first edition, a folio such as this copy, ran to almost a thousand pages, and perhaps unsurprisingly Heylyn was blind by the end of its production.
This copy boasts at least four previous owners by 1750, including two women, and the text is dotted with occasional marginalia and, by our count, nine manicules, perhaps the most significant pointing to the following text in the section on the European discovery of America: "And had not Charls [sic] the fifth ordained with most Christian prudence, that the Natives should not be compelled to work in the Mines against their wills; but that the Spaniards should provide themselves of Slaves elsewhere; the Natives, in a little longer time had been exterminated, to the great reproach of Christianity and the Gospel" (p. 1017).
An invaluable, early and detailed description of the Americas both North and South. Of the territory of Virginia, it "hath on the North, Canada; on the South, Florida; on the East, Mare de Noort, the Western boundaries not known, or not well discovered" (p. 1026). Indeed, the engraved map of the Americas still shows California as an enormous island off the Pacific coast, a giant, friendly-looking sea monster to the mysterious northwest.
See the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for additional information. ESTC R18289.
Price: $3,250.00