De Bry, Theodor:

$475,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

[THE GRAND VOYAGES, PARTS I-IX, IN LATIN]. "The cornerstone of every library of Americana" - Penrose. A very fine and celebrated set of the first editions in Latin of the first nine parts of De Bry's Grand Voyages. In addition to being a cornerstone to any serious collection of travel books, this work is one of the greatest collections of voyages published during the early golden age of European exploration. It is one of the monuments of early Americana and early travel literature, and one of the great illustrated works depicting Native Americans and colonial-native interactions in the New World. The present set, in a lovely uniform binding and enhanced by extra-illustrations and variant states of text and plates, has extraordinary provenance to among the greatest group of 19th and 20th collectors of European Americana: William Menzies, Joseph Drexel and Bois Penrose.Theodor De Bry (1528-98) first began the publication of this astounding collection of voyages following a visit to England in 1587. There he met geographer Richard Hakluyt, who was preparing his own depiction of voyages in the New World. Hakluyt convinced De Bry to publish his own illustrated collection of voyages, giving him a copy of Hariot's Virginia..., which would become the first part of the Grand Voyages, published in 1590. He would go on to publish the next five parts from 1591 until his death in 1598, the series of Grand Voyages completed by his widow and sons."Theodor De Bry...was a skillful engraver, a

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