Linschoten, Jan Huygen van (1563-1611).

4 parts in one volume, folio (291 x 187mm.), [12], 462 [2]pp. (last leaf blank, here lacking), illustration: engraved title by William Rogers (trimmed to plate mark and mounted), engraved portrait of Linschoten bound before title (from a Dutch edition, trimmed to plate mark and mounted), woodcut intials and headpieces, 3 letterpress divisional titles with engraved cartographical vignette (world map on title to Part III), 3 folding engraved world maps, 14 folding maps and plans, 30 double-page or folding plates by the brothers van Deutecum, 4 woodcut maps in the text after Barent Langenes, extra-illustrations: a plate from the Dutch edition cut-out and mounted facing the second part, hand-coloured portrait of Linschoten, and an engraved divisional title from a Dutch edition bound before the third part, each trimmed and mounted, binding: eighteenth-century mottled calf gilt, spine in six compartments with raised bands gilt, a little light spotting to text, some engravings trimmed (see above), some maps and plates strengthened, extremities slightly rubbed

STC 15691; Alden 598.57; Church 321; Sabin 41374; JCB i 362

first edition in english. together with hakluyt, the most important collection of voyages and travels in english printed in the sixteenth century. a good copy.

This work was held in such high esteem that for nearly a century a copy was given to voyagers to the East Indies for use as a pilot guide. This no doubt accounts for the fact that fine copies, with all maps and plates present, are so rare. Although the maps were re-engraved for the English edition, sometimes the Dutch maps are found inserted, as in this copy, which contains 3 maps in English, the remaining being in Latin and/or Dutch. The three world maps in this copy comprise the following: first, a close copy of Petrus Plancius' map by Jan Baptist Vrients (1596) which was prepared for the first edition of Linschoten's Itinerario (1596), [Shirley 192]; the second is after Abraham Ortelius [Shirley 167], and was first used in the first edition of Hakluyt's Principall Navigations (1589) and then for this first English translation of Linschoten; and the third is Plancius's Orbis terrarum typus... 1594 [Shirley 187], which sometimes occurs in copies of Linschoten's work issued after 1599 (according to Shirley). The woodcut maps in the text are of Madagascar, Sumatra, Java and St Helena. The 30 double-page plates have engraved captions in Latin and Dutch.