Oct 16, 2018 - Sale 2488

Sale 2488 - Lot 93

Price Realized: $ 106,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
MANDEVILLE, JEAN DE, attributed to. Reysen und Wanderschafften durch das Gelobte Land. German translation by Otto von Diemeringen. Over 150 woodcut text illustrations. [89] (of [90]) leaves, with the title supplied in facsimile on laid paper. Gothic type. Folio, 260x197 mm, late 18th-/early 19th-century white deerskin, probably a remboîtage, soiled and worn; marginal foxing and soiling, early marginalia imperfectly washed, scattered marginal repairs not affecting text or illustrations, 2 small wormholes in blank outer and lower margin of last few leaves. Property of the descendants of Mary S. Collins. (Strassburg: Johann Prüss, 1488)

Additional Details

Seventh edition in German of an account of the known world dating from the mid-14th century and probably written originally in French, "one of the most popular and widely circulated books produced anywhere in Europe before the advent of printing and one of the few such books to have had an almost continuous afterlife in print" (DLB). The earliest recorded edition is a Dutch version printed circa 1477; the earliest in German appeared in 1480. Though ostensibly based on the narrator's own experiences, the work was compiled from a variety of written sources, including the itineraries of genuine travellers. Nearly half the text deals with the Holy Land and routes there from Europe, and the remainder chiefly with Asia and Africa. HC(Add) 10650; Schäfer 220; Sarton III, 1602-04; ISTC im00168000 (5 collections in Europe, only the Yale Center for British Art in the U. S.).