Purchas, Samuel (c. 1577-1626).

Ibid. Purchas his pilgrimage. Or relations of the world... in foure parts. This first contayneth a theological and geographical historie of Asia... The fourth edition, much enlarged, [etc.]. London: William Stansby for Henry Fetherstone, 1626, fourth edition, first issue, [38], 242, 241-636, 635-1047, [37]pp., second leaf signed A2, illustration: engraved folding map of China backed on linen (pp.436-437), and 23 maps and one engraved illustration in text, without the first blank

together 5 volumes, folio (325 x 210mm.), Roman, italic, Greek and Hebrew letter, binding: nineteenth-century blind-stamped morocco by Hatton of Manchester, gilt turn-ins, all edges gilt, spines faded, some joints splitting

Robert Gray MD. FRCP London & Edinburgh, 1700 inscription in Pilgrimage.

STC 20509 & 20508; Sabin 66682-66686; Church 401A (with engraved title dated 1624); Borba de Moraes, pp.692-693; Hill, p.243; see L.E. Pennington, editor, The Purchas Handbook: Studies of the life, times and writings of Samuel Purchas 1577-1626 (London: The Hakluyt Society, Second Series 185-186, 1997), and in particular the bibliography by Pamela Neville-Sington in vol. 2 pp. 465 onwards.

a fine extra-illustrated copy of one of the greatest of english travel books which has served as a source and inspiration for writers since its publication. From Milton to Coleridge and Thoreau, and onwards to the twentieth-century, scholars have made use of these great volumes, which have served to spread geographical, political and economic knowledge of foreign lands in the English tongue, to mould English attitudes to foreigners and to inspire poets. As Thoreau puts it, "decayed literature makes the richest of all soils".

'This great geographical collection is a continuation and enlargement of Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations. At the death of Hakluyt there was left a large collection of voyages in manuscript which came into the hands of Purchas, who added to them many more voyages and travels... Purchas followed the general plan of Hakluyt, but he frequently put the accounts into his own words... The main divisions of the work fall into two parts: the first covering the world known to Ptolemy, the second coming down to Purchas' own day. This fine collection includes the accounts of Cortés and Pizarro, Drake, Cavendish, John and Richard Hawkins, Queirós, Magellan, van Noort, Spilbergen, and Barents, as well as the categories of Portugese voyages to the East Indies, Jesuit voyages to China and Japan, East India Company voyages, and the expeditions of the Muscovy Company. The fifth volume of this set of the Pilgimes is in reality the fourth and best edition of the Pilgrimage' (Hill).

All of the folding maps, charts and plates have been backed on linen. The extra illustrations in volume 1 include 3 folding charts at p.106 (Lib. I): (1) Tierra del Fuogo found by Le Maire, (2) Papua New Guinea found by same in 1616, and (3) a chart of Le Maire's route, all with captions in Dutch, Latin and French. At p. 96/97 are 2 plates relating to Coco island; at p. 159 is the plate of  "de krake van S. Thome". These are taken from Le Maire's Spieghel der australische navigatie of 1622 (Sabin 44059), the title-page of which (with his portrait on verso) is bound at Lib. II p. 106.

The first issue of Purchas his Pilgrimage has lines 8-9 of the title-page reading "unto this Present. IN FOURE PARTS.", and the first leaf of the dedicatory epistle to Archbishop Abbot is mis-signed A2. Only four copies of this issue are listed in the census (three in the USA, and one then with Quaritch), and it "was almost certainly a mistake..." (The Purchas Handbook ii p. 502). In three of these copies is inserted after the title-leaf, the dedication to Charles I, signed [paraph]3, which had been omitted in the first issue. It is not present in this copy. The dedicatory epistle to Archbishop Abbot was entirely rewritten for the second issue.