Item #JLR0777 Description of the Spanish islands and settlements On the Coast of the West Indies, Compiled from authentic Memoirs, Revised by Gentlemen who have resided many Years in the Spanish Settlements; and illustrated With Thirty-two maps and plans, Chiefly from original Drawings taken from the Spaniards in the last War, And Engraved by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to His Majesty. Thomas Jefferys.
Description of the Spanish islands and settlements On the Coast of the West Indies, Compiled from authentic Memoirs, Revised by Gentlemen who have resided many Years in the Spanish Settlements; and illustrated With Thirty-two maps and plans, Chiefly from original Drawings taken from the Spaniards in the last War, And Engraved by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to His Majesty
Description of the Spanish islands and settlements On the Coast of the West Indies, Compiled from authentic Memoirs, Revised by Gentlemen who have resided many Years in the Spanish Settlements; and illustrated With Thirty-two maps and plans, Chiefly from original Drawings taken from the Spaniards in the last War, And Engraved by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to His Majesty
Description of the Spanish islands and settlements On the Coast of the West Indies, Compiled from authentic Memoirs, Revised by Gentlemen who have resided many Years in the Spanish Settlements; and illustrated With Thirty-two maps and plans, Chiefly from original Drawings taken from the Spaniards in the last War, And Engraved by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to His Majesty
Description of the Spanish islands and settlements On the Coast of the West Indies, Compiled from authentic Memoirs, Revised by Gentlemen who have resided many Years in the Spanish Settlements; and illustrated With Thirty-two maps and plans, Chiefly from original Drawings taken from the Spaniards in the last War, And Engraved by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to His Majesty
Description of the Spanish islands and settlements On the Coast of the West Indies, Compiled from authentic Memoirs, Revised by Gentlemen who have resided many Years in the Spanish Settlements; and illustrated With Thirty-two maps and plans, Chiefly from original Drawings taken from the Spaniards in the last War, And Engraved by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to His Majesty
Description of the Spanish islands and settlements On the Coast of the West Indies, Compiled from authentic Memoirs, Revised by Gentlemen who have resided many Years in the Spanish Settlements; and illustrated With Thirty-two maps and plans, Chiefly from original Drawings taken from the Spaniards in the last War, And Engraved by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to His Majesty
Description of the Spanish islands and settlements On the Coast of the West Indies, Compiled from authentic Memoirs, Revised by Gentlemen who have resided many Years in the Spanish Settlements; and illustrated With Thirty-two maps and plans, Chiefly from original Drawings taken from the Spaniards in the last War, And Engraved by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to His Majesty
Description of the Spanish islands and settlements On the Coast of the West Indies, Compiled from authentic Memoirs, Revised by Gentlemen who have resided many Years in the Spanish Settlements; and illustrated With Thirty-two maps and plans, Chiefly from original Drawings taken from the Spaniards in the last War, And Engraved by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to His Majesty
Description of the Spanish islands and settlements On the Coast of the West Indies, Compiled from authentic Memoirs, Revised by Gentlemen who have resided many Years in the Spanish Settlements; and illustrated With Thirty-two maps and plans, Chiefly from original Drawings taken from the Spaniards in the last War, And Engraved by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to His Majesty
Description of the Spanish islands and settlements On the Coast of the West Indies, Compiled from authentic Memoirs, Revised by Gentlemen who have resided many Years in the Spanish Settlements; and illustrated With Thirty-two maps and plans, Chiefly from original Drawings taken from the Spaniards in the last War, And Engraved by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to His Majesty

Description of the Spanish islands and settlements On the Coast of the West Indies, Compiled from authentic Memoirs, Revised by Gentlemen who have resided many Years in the Spanish Settlements; and illustrated With Thirty-two maps and plans, Chiefly from original Drawings taken from the Spaniards in the last War, And Engraved by Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to His Majesty

AN EXCEPTIONALLY TALL AND UNSOPHISTICATED EXAMPLE 

 

London: T. Jefferys, 1762. First edition.

Quarto (10 11/16” x 8 ½”, 271mm x 216mm): π4(–π1) a-c4 B-O4 P2  [$2 signed]. 69 leaves, pp. [6] (title, blank, dedication, blank, advertisement, list of plans) i ii-xxiv, 1 2-106, [2] (2pp. index). [=xxx, 106, ii] With 32 engraved plates: a folding map with outline color bound as frontispiece, 2 large folding maps and 29 folding plans.

Bound in contemporary half sprinkled calf over marbled boards. On the spine, five raised bands. Title gilt to red sheep in the second panel. All edges of the text-block untrimmed.

The rear board detached, and the front hinge tender. Scuffed and rubbed, with sections of loss at the head- and tail-piece as well as the peripheries. The front free end-paper laid in. Mildly evenly tanned, with some passages of peripheral soiling. Presented in a cloth slip-case. Entirely unsophisticated. Ink ownership sigature of Samuel Reynardson Jr. to the title-page.


Thomas Jefferys (1719–1771) was geographer first to the Prince of Wales and then, upon his accession, to George III. From the 1750’s he had been issuing maps and atlases of the Americas, which, because of the Prince of Wales’s patronage, benefitted from the most up-to-date surveys. Over the course of the XVIIIc the French and Spanish alternated in British esteem as the great foes; in the course of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) Britain and France vied over Canada to the north and the Caribbean colonies to the south. Spain’s alliance with France made plans “taken from the Spaniards in the last War” a great achievement of British intelligence.

The Anglo-Spanish war of 1762–1763 (a subsidiary conflict) was fought particularly in the region described in the present atlas, and included Cuba’s only respite from Spain’s colonization — captured by the British and then returned in exchange for Florida — from the early XVIc to 1898. Britain’s naval dominance in the Caribbean was key to her eventual success, and was an important preparation for its eventual role in the American Revolution.

Samuel Reynardson (1704–1797) of Holywell Hall in Lincolnshire comes from a distinguished family; his grandfather Sir Abraham was Lord Mayor of London and his grandson-in-law (who took the surname as his wife was an heiress) was General Thomas Birch Reynardson. Samuel did have a son of the same name, but he was born and died in 1735.

Palau 123372; Phillips 3941; Sabin 35959.

Item #JLR0777

Price: $9,000

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