Thevet, André | Featuring some of the earliest illustrations of the New World

Thevet, André

Les singularitez de la France antarctique, autrement nommée Amerique & plusieurs Terres et Isles de nostre temps. Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1558

8vo (161 x 112 mm). collation: A–X⁸ Y⁴: 172 leaves. Printer's woodcut device of hand and compass on title-page, 41 woodcut text illustrations, numerous woodcut decorative initials; neatly repaired patch on title-page, some dampstaining, chiefly marginal and most severe at the last few leaves. Contemporary vellum, overlapping fore-edges, remnants of two pairs of ties, plain endpapers and edges; soiled, front free endpaper lacking. Half green morocco folding-case.

The Streeter père copy of the Plantin edition of this essential source on the Indigenous peoples of Brazil, published the year after the Paris first edition and one of the earliest productions of the Plantin press. André Thevet, a Franciscan friar, accompanied Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon's expedition to Brazil to found a French colony there, near present-day Rio de Janeiro, in 1555–1556. The expedition set sail from Le Havre in May 1555, and the narrative includes descriptions of Gibraltar, Africa, the Canaries, and Madagascar. The fleet arrived in the New World at Cap de Frie on 10 November.

Although Myron P. Gilmore characterizes Thevet's narrative as a "farrago combin[ing] his own fabrications with some observations, hearsay accounts, and reports of flora and fauna, cannibals, and monsters," Les singularitez de la France antarctique is a significant primary source based not only on the author's personal experience but also on the writings and reminiscences of contemporary French navigators to Canada and Brazil — all of whom were personally known to Thevet, according to Henry Stevens (Gilmore, "The New World in French and English Historians of the Sixteenth Century," in First Images of America, ed. Chiappelli, II:521).

Among the important descriptions of the customs and beliefs of Brazilian natives, the report on tobacco and the manner in which the Indians used it is one of the earliest known and is accompanied by the famous illustration of an Indian smoking a cigar on O3r. Thevet is sometimes credited with the introduction of tobacco into France, although this is more usually attributed to Jean Nicot, whose name is perpetuated in the word nicotine. (However, Earl J. Hamilton notes that "Thevet brought from Brazil nicotiana tabacum, the kind universally used today; and Nicot, whose seed originally came from Florida, sent to France nicotiana rustica, a sort now little grown. …"; "What the New World Gave the Economy of the Old," in First Images of America, ed. Chiappelli, II:861). Thevet also provides the earliest European descriptions of South American species such as the sloth, anteater, and toucan.

The text is supplemented by two fine series of woodcuts, usually attributed to Jean Cousin. These images are among the earliest depictions of the New World and influenced illustrations of later ethnographies including de Bry, Lery, and Benzoni, as well as the natural histories of Merian and Gesner.  

Other regions of the New World are also described: Cuba, Peru (the mines of Potosi), and Mexico (which is compared to Venice). There is in addition a chapter on Florida as well as one of the earliest accounts of Canada and Newfoundland, which Church believes was contributed by Jacques Cartier, although others propose that Thevet visited Canada on his return to France. 

REFERENCES:

Adams T624; Arents (Add.) 21; Borba de Moraes 2:304; Church 108; European Americana 558/41; Fairfax Murray, French 537; Lande 834; Sabin 95340; Streeter sale 1:21 (this copy); Voet V:2311

PROVENANCE:

Thomas W. Streeter (book label; Parke-Bernet, 25 October 1966, lot 21) — Sotheby's London, 13 April 1989, lot 338 (undesignated consignor)