Books and Manuscripts

Samuel Purchas's Famed Collection of Travel Narratives

London: Printed by William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone, 1614. "The second Edition, much enlarged with Additions through the whole Worke." Small folio. (xxviii), 918 (but, 908 pp., some misnumbered), (36) pp.; pp. 540-548 bound out of order. Illustrated with woodcut initials and head- and tail-pieces. Old full brown calf, stamped in blind and in gilt, boards and spine dry and alligatored, extremities and joints rubbed; endpapers renewed; contemporary ownership signatures and inscriptions on title-page, soiling to same; title-page trimmed; scattered soiling to text. ESTC S111828; Sabin 66679

A foundational text of English travel literature. A wildly popular work upon its publication in 1613, this revised second edition is expanded and features accounts of travels through Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, in particular, accounts of Canada, Virginia, and Florida, as well as the explorations of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Christopher Columbus, Martin Frobisher, Jacques Cartier, Henry Hudson, Sir Walter Raleigh, Hernan Cortes, and others. The work was continuously revised by Purchas and went through four editions until his death in 1626.