Purchas, Samuel

Purchas His Pilgrimes. In Five Books. [With his:] Purchas his Pilgrimage. London: William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone, 1625; 1626 



5 volumes, folio (12 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.; 318 x 210 mm). Five letter-press titles, 7 double-page engraved maps including the Virginia map in Verner's 10th state and a repeat of China, 81 half-page engraved maps in the text, woodcut and a few engraved text illustrations and decorative woodcut initials; engraved title in expert facsimile, first and second letterpress titles inlaid, Virginia map shaved in fore-edge affecting text and image plus small hole near bottom touching shield, a few leaves repaired in upper outer corners or in margins in vols. 1,2 4, margins of index leaves in vol. 3 extended, title of vol. 5 soiled. Late nineteenth-century dark-green crushed morocco, inner edges with gilt foliate corner devices and rules, edges; spine sun-faded to brown, some edges lightly rubbed.

Michael Sharpe (bookplate)

Church 401A; Alden-Landis 625/173; Hill 1403; Borba de Moraes II, pp. 692-93; Sabin 66682-86; STC 20509 & 20508.5

Purchas His Pilgrimes. In Five Books. [With his:] Purchas his Pilgrimage. London: William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone, 1625; 1626 5 volumes, folio (12 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.; 318 x 210 mm). Five letter-press titles, 7 double-page engraved maps including the Virginia map in Verner's 10th state and a repeat of China, 81 half-page engraved maps in the text, woodcut and a few engraved text illustrations and decorative woodcut initials; engraved title in expert facsimile, first and second letterpress titles inlaid, Virginia map shaved in fore-edge affecting text and image plus small hole near bottom touching shield, a few leaves repaired in upper outer corners or in margins in vols. 1,2 4, margins of index leaves in vol. 3 extended, title of vol. 5 soiled. Late nineteenth-century dark-green crushed morocco, inner edges with gilt foliate corner devices and rules, edges; spine sun-faded to brown, some edges lightly rubbed.
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First edition, with fourth edition of the Pilgrimage as issued.  An elegant copy of the great collection of exploration narratives from antiquity through the up-to-date accounts of John Smith. The work was a continuation of Hakluyt who left a large collection of manuscripts which came into the hands of Samuel Purchas (c. 1577–1626) in about 1620. The work took more than three years to print, and was the largest book published on an English press to that time. 

Purchas edited oral accounts and manuscripts, translated texts in classical and foreign languages, and reprinted previously published works. His only original contributions came in the form of various editorials scattered through the volumes on, among other things, Solomon's voyage to Ophir, Pope Alexander's bulls of donation of 1493, the "iniquitie" of papal power, the history of Europe, and "Virginia's Verger," an ideological justification for English settlement in Virginia in the wake of the Powhatan uprising of 1622 (Pilgrimes, 4.1809–26). Though his editorial methods are often compared unfavorably with Hakluyt's, his work was probably more influential and more widely read.