BRIGGS HENRY The North part of America Conteyning Newfoundla

Sale 2450 - Lot 30

Price Realized: $ 15,000

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000

BRIGGS, HENRY. The North part of America Conteyning Newfoundland, New England, Virginia, Florida, New Spaine, and Noua Francia… and upon ye West the large and goodly Iland of California. Double-page engraved map of North America showing California as an island. 14x18 inches sheet size, wide margins; hand-colored; additional folds, portions of centerfold reinforced with two small areas of reinstatement, page numbers in early ink in upper corners. London, [1625]

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Additional Details

"… renowned as being the progenitor of the most persistent of cartographic misconceptions, California as an island…" (Burden).

This landmark map accompanied Briggs' Treatise of the North-West Passage to the South Sea which appeared in volume 3 of Samuel Purchas' Pilgrimes in 1625. All examples we have seen of this map contain the 852/853 page numbers corresponding to that work engraved in the upper corners of the map. These engraved numbers are not present in the copy being offered here. Acknowledging Burden's citation that "There were no further editions, and only the one state is known", we must conclude this as being an unrecorded state of the map. This example does however seem to associate with Purchas, as the numbers 853/853 appear in contemporary ink in the upper corners of the margin. Burden 214; Tooley, California as an Island 1.