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WYTFLIET, Cornelis. Histoire universelle des Inde

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Douai: François Fabri, 1607. Folio (282 x 180 mm). 3 parts in 1. 1: [4], 1-136, [2], 2: [6], 1-72, 3: [1], 1-71, [2, Table], mispagination as usual. Repeated engraved title with letterpress cartouches, parts 1 and 2 with old hand coloring, large woodcut printer's device at end of parts 1 and 3, typographic head-piece ornaments, woodcut initials and tailpieces, text within ruled borders. 19 double-page engraved maps including a double-hemisphere world map (Shirley 207) after Rumold Mercator, 4 half-page maps of Japan, India, China and the Philippines. Contemporary vellum, ms. title to spine. Condition: first title loose but holding and tear with loss at fore-edge, small gouges to edges, few leaves slightly browned, some creases, light dampstains to head, few scattered stains; hinges slightly split, vellum soiled, corners bumped. Acquisition: purchased from Sotheby's London through William Reese Company (2000), $16,362. second edition in french. the first separately published atlas with all the maps devoted exclusively to america. A fine copy of Wytfliet's description of the Americas with the addition of Magini's valuable description of the West and East Indies and Japan. Part 1 is a translation of Wytfliet's Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum, first published at Louvain in 1597, the first atlas devoted entirely to the Americas; parts 2 and and 3 contain accounts of the East Indies by Magini and others. The first edition of Wytfliet's work is 'the first atlas of America' (Burden), and was first published in Latin as Descriptionis Ptolemaicae augmentum in 1597. The title suggests it was marketed as a supplement to Ptolemy's Geographia (see lot 55), athough Shirley calls this classification erroneous. The work was evidently popular as two further Latin editions appeared in 1598 and 1603. The work combined the narratives of Magini and others first published under the present title in 1605 and was then translated into French. Further editions of this compilation appeared in 1607 (the present copy is the second edition in French) and 1611. The nineteen double-page engraved maps of the American continent appeared in all of the Latin and French editions. The first map (a double-hemisphere world map) is based on Mercator's influential map of 1587 from ten years earlier, and other American maps derive from Petrus Plancius's world map of 1592. The regional maps include, for example, the first printed map of California and the southwest (Burden 106), the most accurate map of the East Coast to appear until the publication of Johannes de Laet's Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien in 1630 (Burden 103), and the first map to use "Canada" in its title (Burden 102). The four small maps, which first appeared in the 1605 edition, and appear in this present copy, include the second known printed map of the Philippine Islands. "It is as important in the history of the early cartography of the new world, as Ptolemy's maps are in the study of the old" (Phillips). European Americana 607/100; Atkinson 489; Borba de Moraes 946; Burden 102; Koeman III, 219; Phillips 4459; Sabin 105 700.

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