Beschreibung:

EXQUEMELIN, Alexander Olivier (c.1645-1707) and Basil RINGROSE (d. 1686). Bucaniers of America. London: William Crooke, 1684-1685. 4 parts in one volume, 4° (218 x 165mm). Three folding engraved plates, four engraved portraits, and numerous illustrations. (A very few repairs to margins, occasional light scattered soiling and spotting.) 19th-century red morocco gilt, gilt edges. Provenance: Thomas Edward Watson (bookplate; by descent to the present owners). FIRST EDITION OF RINGROSE, AND THE SECOND EDITION IN ENGLISH OF EXQUEMELIN, "the classic of buccaneering books" (Cox); "perhaps no book in any language was ever the parent of so many imitations, and the source of so many fictions as this" (Sabin). It includes, among its engraved portraits of notorious pirates, one of only two known portraits of Sir Henry Morgan. Indeed, Bucaniers of America "forms the basis of all the popular accounts of Morgan" (DNB). Sabin reports that Sir Henry took exception to the account of his exploits, and that he sued William Crooke for libel; Crooke was forced to settle by "his Submission and Acknowledgement in Print" (Sabin 23479). The second part of Bucaniers of America was written by the English buccaneer, Basil Ringrose who, by 1680, had thrown in his lot with Bartholomew Sharp, ranging up and down the western coast of South America. Ringrose's "important share in the transactions was the keeping [of] a detailed journal, in which he described not only the events of the warfare which they waged, but the internal history of their force -- the hardships, labours, quarrels, jealousies, and divisions -- simply but graphically. To all this he added descriptions of the natives they consorted with, of the places they visited, charts of the harbours, sketches of the coasts, headlands, or objects noteworthy for the mariner, forming a record which, though much less extended, may compare with the narratives of William Dampier" (DNB). Cox II, p. 207. Hill, p. 100. Sabin 23481.