Beschreibung:

MARTYR, PETER. The Decades of the newe worlde or west India, Conteyning the nauigations and conquestes of the Spanyardes, with the particular description of the moste ryche and large landes and Ilandes lately founde in the west Ocean perteynyng to the inheritance of the kinges of Spayne...translated into Englysshe by Rycharde Eden. London: [colophon: Imprynted...by Edwarde Sutton [for]] William Powell, 1555. Small 4to, eighteenth-century red morocco, wide gilt roll-tooled borders of leafy stems with additional small star tools and built-up corners with pointillé tools, gilt-panelled spine with daisy and acorn tools, green morocco lettering-piece, g.e., cloth chemise and morocco- backed slipcase,a few scratches and small dents to covers, 2 small gouges to lower cover, wear to extremities and raised bands at joints, spine faded, some minor marginal soiling, a few mostly marginal dampstains, 2 small stains to fol. 3B1, 3D1 with burn-hole affecting 4 letters, headlines of approximately 15 leaves shaved . FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH, THE FIRST COLLECTION OF VOYAGES PRINTED IN ENGLISH, AND THE FIRST WORK TO CONTAIN NARRATIVES OF ENGLISH VOYAGES, STC's third issue with the "Sutton" imprint, mostly black letter, title within woodcut border [McKerrow & Ferguson 11], 3 full-page astronomical woodcut diagrams, this copy (or issue ?) without the inserted leaf IIIi2. "This book is of great historical importance. Besides the first Three Decades of Peter Martyr it contains a translation of that author's writings of the recently discovered islands, De nuper sub D. Carolo repertis Insulis , first printed in 1521. It also contains the Bull of Pope Alexander [1493], in Latin and English, by which the world was divided between Spain and Portugal, as well as translations of the most important parts of the works of Oviedo, Maximilian of Transylvania, Vespuccius, Gomara, and others, pertaining to the maritime discovery of the New World." (Church, 102). In the preface is advocated for the first time the colonization of North America by the English. "Moreover, for over a quarter of a century it proved to be the English source-book of geographical and navigational knowledge. As such it was to be of the utmost value to men like Hawkins and Drake." It contains "the first printed English treatise on the compass, and the first description of 'What degrees are', and 'A demonstration of the roundness of the Earth'...At the end of the book Eden added a section on metals, the first work of its kind printed in English, for the benefit of explorers and prospectors."--D.W. Waters, The art of navigation in England in Elizabethan and early Stuart times (New Haven 1958), p. 87; STC 647; Sabin 1561; Church 102; Alden 355/13; JCB I, 187; Borba de Moraes [1983], p. 532. Provenance : Early ownership inscription on title-page, scattered contemporary and 19th-century marginal annotations and underscorings; William Boynton Strickland, bookplate and inscription dated 1836 on front flyleaf.