Thomas Hariot

First edition of this iconic account of Virginia, the Roanoke colony, and its environs, including the landmark map of Virginia and engravings of Native American life in the 1580s.

• Thomas Hariot (English).
• Illustrated by John White.
• Engravings by Theodor De Bry.
• Admiranda Narratio Fida Tamen, De Commodis Et Incolarum Ritibus Virginiæ.
• Francoforti [Frankfurt]: Theodori De Bry [Theodor De Bry], 1590.
• 34, [64], [22] pages, most printed one side only.
• Illustrated with engraved title page and 25 (of 28) engraved plates (two folding), and double-page map.
• Mixed first and second issue.
• Text in Latin.
• Modern polished brown goat boards tooled in blind and gilt, light brown goatskin spine label, red-stained edges, endpapers renewed.

"[O]ne of the most significant cartographical milestones in colonial North American history" (Philip D. Burden)

The first of De Bry's series of great and small voyages, this book is particularly important for its content on the lives of the Native American populations of Virginia and North Carolina in the late 16th century as recorded by a key member of an early expedition. Thomas Hariot, an English polymath fluent in Carolina Algonquin, penned the text on a voyage to Roanoke Island in 1585-6, including direct observations of the Indigenous populations' living arrangements, farming, fishing, and traditional practices. The text is accompanied by illustrations originally made by John White, a member of the same expedition and later famous for his discovery that the colony of Roanoke had vanished — the very colony described in detail here by Hariot.

Copies of De Bry's voyages are known for causing "the greatest confusion of bibliographers" and "the despair of collectors" (Church, vol 1, 317) owing to their typically mixed and/or incomplete states. The first and second issues of part one of the voyages were issued in the same year and are largely uniform with only minor differences in the position of the text. As with the vast majority of known copies, the present copy contains plates from both issues, with six plates from the first issue and six from the second (where there are issue points to distinguish them; the remaining 19 plates are identical between issues), as well as a mix of the first two text issues and the map in its second state (as usual) as identified by Burden. Though lacking some leaves, this copy retains its complete set of the Native American plates, arguably the most important and informative part of the entire De Bry series, and the stellar map of Virginia. A foundational book for collectors of Americana.