Solinus, Polyhistor, Basel, 1538, heavily annotated, modern cloth

Solinus, Gaius Julius

Polyhistor, rerum toto orbe memorabilium thesaurus locupletissimus... Pomponii Melae de situ orbis libri tres... Basel: (Michael Isengrin and Heinrich Petri), 1538

folio (293 x 193mm.), woodcut initials, woodcut illustrations (including maps), 2 folding woodcut maps (of Greece and of Asia), without final blank leaf, modern cloth, heavily annotated throughout by several early hands, map of Asia repaired along fold

A fine edition of Solinus's compilation of antique marvels, probably dating from the fourth century, predominantly extracted from Pliny and Pomponius Mela and arranged geographically from Rome outwards across the Empire. Solinus was widely read in the medieval and Renaissance periods as he successfully condensed Pliny's monumental text into a manageable size.

The folding map of Asia contains the first representation of the north western coast of America on a printed map (Burden, p. 15).

This copy has been richly annotated. The numerous annotations, mostly in two different hands, include many additional entries to the printed index, marginal notes, references and underlinings. A few words or phrases have been crossed through, presumably when the annotator knows that Solinus is incorrect, and some places names have been added to the maps.

LITERATURE:

Burden, Mapping of North America 11; VD16 A 6968; Paul Dover, "Reading 'Pliny's ape' in the Renaissance: the Polyhistor of Solinus" in Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Cambridge, 2013)

PROVENANCE:

Bought in Rostock for 1 1/4 thalers on 22 June 1577, inscription at foot of title-page (in the same hand as some of the annotations to the text); William Reynolds of Streatham, letterpress bookplate; D.L. Cumming, signature on inside front cover