Lot 25: LINSCHOTEN, Jan Huygen van (1563-1611). His Discours of Voyages unto ye Easte & West Indies. Devided into Foure Bookes . Translated from Dutch into English by William Phillip. London: [John Windet for] John Wolfe, 1598.

LINSCHOTEN, Jan Huygen van (1563-1611). His Discours of Voyages unto ye Easte & West Indies. Devided into Foure Bookes. Translated from Dutch into English by William Phillip. London: [John Windet for] John Wolfe, 1598.

2υo (285 x 191 mm). Mostly black letter, double column. Engraved general title by William Rogers (Johnson, p.2, Rogers no.3), letterpress divisional titles to books 2-4 each with a different engraved map vignette (Congo, double-hemisphere world [Shirley 182], and Spain), 12 folding maps and plates (comprising 9 maps on 11 sheets, including a World Map after Ortelius [Shirley 167], and 3 plates with views of St. Helena and the island of Ascension), 4 woodcut maps in text, woodcut initials, factotums and head-piece ornaments (maps each mounted on laid paper and backed with linen). (Title lightly spotted, headlines cropped in first six gatherings, Hh2 with repaired tear crossing text, small rustholes on L2 and Ll1 catching a few letters.) Modern dark-brown morocco gilt, sides with gilt- and blind-rule borders surrounding a central panel of blind-tooled fleurs-de-lis, spine similarly decorated, edges gilt, by W. Pratt. Provenance: Lenox Library (duplicate stamp on verso of title, this copy possibly sold by Henry Stevens to Lenox ca 1855 and thereafter rebound by Pratt); Charles Leonard Frost Robinson, Newport, Rhode Island (bookplate; his sale Anderson Galleries, 20 April 1917, lot 390, purchased at the sale by George D. Smith of Lathrop C. Harper).

LINSCHOTEN'S 'DISCOURS' IS NEXT TO HAKLUYT'S 'PRINCIPALL NAVIGATIONS' THE MOST IMPORTANT COLLECTION OF 16TH-CENTURY VOYAGES IN ENGLISH -- AND CONSIDERABLY RARER

FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH. Linschoten voyaged to Goa in 1583 and 1589 and took part in William Barentsz's second voayge to the Kara Sea in 1594-95. His Itinerario was "the first work outside of Portugal and Spain to provide detailed practical information on how to get to and carry on the trade with America and India. The work was indispensable to sailors on the route to the Indies; it provided a dictionary of exotic commodities, of national trading methods, etc. It includes accurate sailing directions to the East Indies and many translations of Spanish and Portuguese documents on geography.

Linschoten's work, along with Hakluyt's, served as a direct stimulus to the building of the vast English and Dutch overseas empires" (Streeter sale). Legend has it that copies were given to every ship sailing to India to use as a log-book. As a result, the maps are often wanting and the book, if found at all, is usually in very poor condition. Most of the maps and views of the English edition are re-engravings of the plates of the original Dutch edition of 1595-96, with captions in Latin and English. Alden & Landis 598/57; Borba de Moraes I:488; Church 321; Hill 1025; Sabin 41374; STC 15691; Streeter sale I:31.