Beschreibung:

BERNARD, Jean Frédéric (publisher) (fl. 1715-1737). Recueil de Voyages au Nord, contenant divers mémoires très utiles au commerce & à la navigation . Amsterdam: J.F. Bernard, 1731-1738 (but v. 6 1729, v. 7 1725, v. 8 1727). The first ten-volume edition of this wide-ranging work on travels in the northern hemisphere, including Iceland, Greenland, Japan, Korea, China, Tartary, the Caspian, and North America, specifically Hudson Bay, Virginia, California, Louisiana, and the Mississippi. The map of Japan, by Adrien Reland, which appeared for the first time in the first, shorter edition of Bernard’s Recueil, represented a pioneering feat: it was the first European map to use Sino-Japanese characters, to name the 66 provinces, and to be based on Japanese maps, particularly one from the library or Benjamin Dutry, a former director of the Dutch East India Company. Cordier, Sinica , col. 1946. Sabin 4936-7. 10 vols, octavo (162 x 95mm). Titles in red and black, several with engraved vignettes. 34 engraved plates, including ethnographic, botanical and zoological illustrations, maps, charts and plans, 31 of which are folding (the first folding map chipped at top with a c.2mm loss and a couple of short marginal tears, short closed tear to map of Louisiana on vol. 5, vol. 8 uniformly browned, some further occasional browning). Uniform contemporary cat's paw calf, spines gilt in compartments with raised bands, red morocco lettering-pieces, edges marbled (extremities a little rubbed). Provenance : 19th-century French purchase note on first front free endpaper.