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Rare Early Edition of the First Atlas of the Americas
Atlas.
WYTFLIET, C. [Louvain, 1598]
Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum sive Occidentis notitia.
Sm. folio.
(4) p.l., 191, (1) pp. & 19 double page maps. Contemporary calf boards re-backed, red morocco label on spine, title in gold, raised bands and gold stamped designs; water staining to top of title page and to one corner of leaves not affecting printed areas, maps all wide-margined with dark impressions; overall excellent.
An excellent copy of a rare, early edition of a landmark atlas of America. "As the first general geography of America, the text of Wytfliet's work may, at least in some degree, have contributed to dispel many of the errors regarding the New World . . . In the history of early cartography, the maps in Wytfliet's Augmentum play the same part for the New World as Ptolemy's do for the old hemisphere, and they give us . . . a valuable summary of the early cartography of America" - Nordenskiold, Facsimile Atlas. Many of Wytfliet's 19 maps are among the earliest regional maps of North America. The map of California, for example, is the earliest separately printed map of that area; "Anian Regnum" of the northwest coast and Alaska is the first to focus exclusively on the area. Wytfliet's "Norumbega" is "the most accurate antecedent to Joannes de Laet's 1630 "Nova Anglia, Novvum Belgium et Virginia" -Schwartz, The Mapping of America, p. 83. And his map of the southeast has a distinctive delineation of Florida that influenced later maps.
The atlas first appeared in two editions in 1597, the first under the imprint of Johannis Bogardi. This edition is of the utmost rarity with fewer than 10 copies known. With the text reset, the atlas was reissued later the same year. The edition offered here, published in 1598, was the next and final appearance of the atlas in the sixteenth century. Maps of this edition are all in their first states as in the previous two editions. All sixteenth century editions of the work are rare and especially sought after. Subsequent and more frequently seen editions appeared in 1603, 1605, 1607, 1611 and 1615 (consisting of the sheets of the first edition with a new title-page.)
Sabin 105697; The World Encompassed, 204; Phillips, Atlases 1140; Skelton, R. A. Introduction to TOT Facsmile Atlas. (Maps:) Burden 100-107. |
