?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 8,000
Bourne, William (d. 1583) A Booke Called the Treasure for Traveilers, Devided into Five Bookes or Partes, Contaynyng very Necessary Matters, for all Sortes of Travailers, eyther by Sea or by Lande.
London: [by Thomas Dawson] for Thomas Woodcocke, 1578.
First edition, quarto, five parts in one volume; woodcut coat of arms of dedicatee on verso of title page, illustrated with text woodcuts throughout; title page deeply toned with large section of the page restored, a missing letter or two made up in facsimile; fore-edge margins in first signature all repaired; the "Faultes escaped in printing" leaf cropped at fore-edge with slight loss; preliminary blank leaf ***4 present with a contemporary list of subjects covered in the book in alphabetical order written by hand; Fff4 blank & present; bound in full modern calf, antique style, masterfully accomplished; 7 1/4 x 5 1/4 in.
Bourne's work "contain[s] the first popular explanation of surveying by triangulation [...] the first English book to describe the volumes, capacities, and proportions of ships' hulls [...] the first to describe the sizes and weights of cordage [...] and explained in popular language the value of mathematics to the seaman." (cf. D.W. Waters, The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times, London, 1958, page 147.)
