Exquemelin, Alexandre Olivier

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

Bucaniers of America: or a True Account of the Most Remarkable Assaults Committed of Late Years upon the Coasts of the West-Indies, by the Bucaniers of Jamaica and Tortuga, Both English and French. London: for William Crooke, 1684–85.
paper, ink, leather

4to (8 7/8 x 6 6/8 in.; 226 x 170 mm). Complete with the 7-page publisher's catalogue (end of vol. 2), 11 plates, numerous woodcuts in text; copy washed, browned, some reinforcement in margin, including on title-page of vol. 1 (also a bit short). Eighteenth-century English calf; rebacked.

Literature

Wing E-3894; Church 689; Hill, pp. 99–100; JCB 1675–1700, pp. 131–2; Sabin 23479

Catalogue Note

First edition in English of this classic account of the pirates, then at the apogee of their power and menace. "The classic of buccaneering books" (Hill), first published in Dutch in 1678. The present edition is based on a Spanish edition of 1681. The appended volume contains Basil Ringrose's original account of the Pacific voyage of Bartholomew Sharpe.