Jun 12 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2708 -
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Sale 2708 - Lot 190

Estimate: $ 25,000 - $ 35,000
(VIRGINIA.) Thomas Hariot. Admiranda narratio fida tamen, de commodis et incolarum ritibus Virginiae (Part One of DeBry's Great Voyages in Latin). Complete with 66 leaves including 31 illustrations as follows: 34 pages (including engraved title and engraved page 3), [2] preliminary text leaves, plate of Adam & Eve with facing text leaf, plate II, folding map [plate I], Pict plates I and II with facing text leaves, plates numbered III to XXIII with text (15 of them on one leaf with descriptive text, 2 of them folding with descriptive text, and 4 with separate facing text leaves), blank leaf [D6], Pict plates III to V with facing text leaves, [7] pages including colophon. Folio, 13 x 9¼ inches, early 19th century mottled calf, moderate wear, tastefully rebacked; moderate worming to outer leaves; edges lightly tinted red; bookplate of Genoese nobleman Girolamo Durazzo (1739-1809) on title page. Frankfurt: Theodore De Bry, 1590
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Additional Details

First edition, mixed first and second issues, of the first of De Bry's series of great and small voyages. It includes the first map of Virginia and numerous engravings of Native American life.

The scientist and linguist Thomas Hariot accompanied Walter Raleigh to the Roanoke colony in 1585. Returning to London, he published "A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia" in 1588; it is unobtainable today. In 1590, Theodore De Bry published Hariot's work in English, Latin, German, and French editions as the first installment of his long-running Great Voyages series. The text is enhanced by numerous dramatic engravings, mostly after watercolors by Hariot's fellow colonist John White.

The double-page map, "Americae pars, Nunc Virginia," shows the coastal region from the Chesapeake Bay down to North Carolina's Outer Banks. To embellish the scene, 4 canoes are shown paddling about the Pamlico Sound, 3 American Indians stand upon the shore, and several English vessels are shown in the ocean. "One of the most significant cartographical milestones in colonial North American history. It was the most accurate map drawn in the sixteenth century of any part of that continent. . . . This is the first map to focus on Virginia (now largely North Carolina), and records the first English attempts at colonisation in the New World" (Burden 76). This is the second state of the map, with the name of one village crudely corrected from Ehesepiooc to Chesepiooc with the original "E" still visible underneath (Cumming 12). This early spelling of Chesapeake is the first appearance of the name in print.

This example follows all points for the first edition, second issue as described in Crawford, with these exceptions: text pages 7 and 29 are first issue, Adam & Eve plate is first issue, Plates III, IV, VII, VIII, X, XI, XII and XXII are all first issue; Plate XXIII is incorrectly signed D4 as described in Church, rather than D5; and the errata page is the second edition. See Ludovic, Earl of Crawford, "Bibliotheca Lindesiana: Grands et Petits Voyages of de Bry," pages 105-109; Church 140-141; European Americana 590/31. Further collation notes upon request.

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