Samuel Purchas | Purchas his Pilgrimes, 1625-26, 5 volumes

Samuel Purchas

Purchas his pilgrimes [- Purchas his pilgrimage. Or relations of the world... in foure parts. This first contayneth a theological and geographical historie of Asia... The fourth edition, much enlarged]. London: William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone, 1625-1626

FIRST EDITION OF PILGRIMES, fourth edition of Pilgrimage, 5 volumes, folio (339 x 213 mm.), roman, italic, Greek and Hebrew letter, engraved additional title in first volume (dated 1625), 6 (only, of 7) double-page or folding engraved maps (comprising: vol.1: map of the Mongol Empire after p. 574; vol.3: map of China after p. 400, map of Greenland after p. 472, map of North America after p. 852; vol.4: map of New France after p. 1836; vol.5: map of China after p. 436), 81 smaller engraved maps in-text, numerous engraved or woodcut illustrations throughout, vol.1 containing Hondius's map of the Christian world on p. 65, and repeated on p. 115, and the blank leaf R4 (frequently wanting), eighteenth century English calf, spines with raised bands in seven compartments, morocco labels to second and fourth compartments, red edges, vol.1: one gathering becoming detached, loss to lower corner of 3M3 affecting engraved map; vol.3: map of North America loose; vol.4: lacking double-page engraved map of Virginia, map of Nova Scotia with repair to verso, worming to lower fore-edge margin, upper hinge weak; vol.5: engraved map at E2 shaved, tear to 3Z3, final verso soiled; some damp staining to the lower gutter, mostly marginal, some small marginal tears, occasional small rust holes, rebacked retaining most of the original spines

FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE GREATEST ENGLISH TRAVEL BOOKS. Pilgrimes is a continuation and enlargement of Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, which came into the hands of Samuel Purchas (c. 1577-1626) in about 1620. Purchas edited and incorporated oral accounts and manuscripts, translated texts in classical and foreign languages, and reprinted previously published works. Purchas relied entirely on material that he could access in England, declaring that he 'neuer travelled 200. miles from Thaxted in Essex, where I was borne'. His only original contributions came in the form of various editorials scattered through the volumes on, among other things, Solomon's voyage to Ophir, Pope Alexander's bulls of donation of 1493, the "iniquitie" of papal power, the history of Europe, and "Virginia's Verger," an ideological justification for English settlement in Virginia in the wake of the Powhatan uprising of 1622 (Pilgrimes, 4.1809-26).

PROVENENCE:

Early ownership inscription of "H Hall" to title-pages of each volume, presumably Henry Benedict Hall (1590-1668) of Highmeadow House, Gloucestershire; by descent to his grand-daughter Benedicta Maria Theresa Hall (d.1749), who, in 1713, married Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage (c.1695-1754)

LITERATURE:

ESTC 20509 & 20508.5; Sabin 66682-86: volume 1 has the same pagination as in the Astor copy, also with the headline "Hollanders lying devices, to disgrace the English" on p.704, and the "objectionable head-lines" described by Sabin 66683.