John Ogilby | Africa: being an accurate description of the regions of Egypt, Barbary, Lybia [etc.], 1670

John Ogilby

Africa, being an accurate description of the regions of Egypt, Barbary, Lybia and Billedulgerid... with all the adjacent islands. London: Printed by Tho. Johnson for the author, 1670

FIRST EDITION, folio (407 x 271 mm.), half-title ("English Atlas, Tome the First."), engraved allegorical frontispiece, 43 double-page plates and maps, 8 single-page plates, 46 engraved in-text illustrations, 9 full-page printed tables, contemporary calf rebacked, marbled edges, double-page printed plate before p.219 and single-page plate after p.452 both loose

The most authentic and comprehensive work on Africa in English published in the seventeenth century. Africa was the first volume of Ogilby's planned "English Atlas" series, as indicated by the often wanting half-title (present in this copy). (See next lot for the second volume in this series). It includes descriptions of Egypt, northern Africa, central and western Africa, southern and eastern Africa including Socotra and islands of the Red Sea, Upper-Ethiopia or the Empire of Abyssine and adjacent islands (including Malta and Gozo). The preface contains Ogilby's only autobiography noting memories and partly frustrated ambitions which, as a result of the Great Fire of 1666, brought him "into a low condition, groaning under a double burden of Sickness and Poverty."

PROVENANCE:

ownership inscription of "Hen: Ben: Hall" to title, i.e. Henry Benedict Hall of Highmeadow House, Gloucestershire; by descent to his daughter Benedicta Maria Theresa Hall (d.1749), who, in 1713, married Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage (c.1695-1754)

LITERATURE:

Wing O1631; Mendelssohn (1979) 3, p.571