Folio (406 x 267 mm). HALF-TITLE ("English Atlas,/Tome the First.", verso blank), engraved title, title-page printed in red and black; large double-page folding map of Africa, 57 engraved maps, views, and plates (43 double-page or folding, 10 half-sheets inserted), engraved illustrations throughout the text. (Some occasional, mostly marginal dampstaining, and occasional spotting or browning, tiny wormhole in the text from Fff3 to the end, sometimes affecting a letter.) Contemporary mottled and paneled calf gilt, spine in 7 compartments with 6 raised bands, red morocco lettering-piece gilt in second, others elaborately gilt, marbled edges (rebacked, preserving original backstrip and endpapers, fore-corners renewed). Provenance: Sir James Colquhoun (armorial bookplate); Abernethy? (armorial bookplate); John Ralph Willis (1938-2007), professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University (bookplate).

FIRST EDITION of the most comprehensive work in English on Africa published in the 17th-century, intended to be the first volume of Ogilby's planned English Atlas series. The double-page maps depict Egypt, Morocco, southern and western Africa, the Congo, Madagascar, and the Cape Verde and Canary Islands. The engraved views include depictions of Alexandria and Cairo, Tangier, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, St. Helena, and the pyramids. "Ogilby may be considered as the English De Bry, his works are similar in their objects, compilation, and mode of illustrations" (Cox). Alden/Landis 670/48; Cox I, p.361; ESTC R22824; Hazlitt II, 432; Ibrahim-Hilmy I.155; Lowndes, p.1719; Mendelssohn (1979) III, p.571; Playfair, Algeria 151; Schuchard, Ogilby 20; Tooley, Africa 87; Wing O163 (and D241); Wolf, Negro History 4.