L’Histoire du Nouveau Monde ou Description des Indes Occidentales, Contenant dix-huict Liures, Par le Sieur Iean de Laet, d’Anuers; Enrichi de nouuelles Tables Geographiques & Figures des Animaux, Plantes & Fruicts
THE FELNER–BORBA de MORAES–STREETER COPY
Laet, Johannes de. L’Histoire du Nouveau Monde ou Description des Indes Occidentales, Contenant dix-huict Liures, Par le Sieur Iean de Laet, d’Anuers; Enrichi de nouuelles Tables Geographiques & Figures des Animaux, Plantes & Fruicts. Leiden: Bonaventure and Abraham Elzevir, 1640. First edition in French.
Folio in 4s (13” x 8 ¼”, 338mm x 222mm): *4-****4 A-Kkkk4 Llll6 [$2 signed]. 338 leaves, pp. [32] (blank, title, dedication, verse, list of maps, preface, table of contents), 1-194 197 198 195 196 199-512 515 516 513 514 519 520 517 518 521-546 549 550 547 548 551-632, [12] (12pp. index). With 14 double-page engraved maps and many woodcut illustrations integral to text.
Bound in XIXc Spanish marbled calf (re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down). On the spine, five panels. Author and title gilt to black straight-grained morocco in the second panel. All edges of the text-block sprinkled red. Marbled end-papers.
Re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down. Rubbed at the extremities. Fore-corners bumped, with some loss. Evenly tanned throughout, with occasional foxing. Some mis-bindings: Bb2.3 reversed and Ttt (2, 1, 4, 3) and Zzz (4, 1, 3, 2); see pagination above. Shelf-label of R. Felner (completed in ink manuscript) to the front paste-down, with the armorial bookplate of Rubens Borba Alves de Moraes below.
Johannes de Laet (1581–1649), was born in Antwerp to cloth merchant Hans de Laet. In 1584, upon the invasion of Antwerp by Spanish troops, his family fled to the Northern Netherlands and settled in Amsterdam. At the University of Leiden, he studied philosophy and theology, matriculating in 1597. His worldly interests led him to London in 1603, where he cleverly invested in Dutch land reclamation projection and overseas trade. His success in his field led him to become one of the founding directors of the Dutch West India Company– a position he held from 1620 until his death.
De Laet first published his account of the New World as Nieuwe Wereldt ofte Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien… (Leiden, 1625). This French edition, probably translated by de Laet himself — each edition, from the 1633 Latin to this French, became more complete and accurate, making the French edition the most desirable (see Sabin) — is one of the most important seventeenth-century New World histories and texts concerning early knowledge of the Americas. The “Nova Anglia” map, showing the coast and inland areas from Nova Scotia to North Carolina, is the first printed map to mention the name Manhattan, here spelled “Manbattes.”
The Streeter catalogue notes that “it is also the earliest to use the Dutch names of Noordt Rivier and Zuyd Rivier, for the Hudson and Delaware Rivers respectively, as well as the Indian Massachusets, for the new English colony ... [the ‘Nova Francia’ map] is one of the foundation maps of Canada” (Streeter). It is “one of the most famous contemporary descriptions of the natural history of the New World. The work was highly praised a century later by Charlevoix, attesting to its accuracy [...] Winsor referred to Laet’s book as the standard seventeenth-century work on New Netherland” (ibid.). The fourteen double-page maps are the work of Hessel Gerritsz, a Dutch engraver who was appointed official cartographer of both Dutch India Companies (over Blaeu).
Rodrigo José de Lima Felner (1809-1877) was a Brazilian author and historian. He served as Knight of the Order of N.S. da Conceição, supported D. Maria II at the Porto garrison, and served as the first official of the Tesouro Publico after its reorganization in 1834. As a member of The Sociedade Propagadora dos Conhecimentos Úteis (Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge), he edited their weekly illustrated magazine O Panorama, and was first Secretário da Inspecção Geral dos Teatros of the Conservatório da Arte Dramatica. Felner wrote some twenty dramas and from 1849 published O Bibliophilo, a periodical dedicated to bibliography.
Rubens Borba Alves de Moraes (1899-1986), was a Brazilian biographer, historian, author of Bibliographia Brasiliana and founder of the newspaper O Separatista, which defended the independence of the state from São Paulo in 1932. He was one of the organizers of the Modern Art Week and a pioneer of library science in Brazil, as well as a director of the United Nations library in New York. Since 1987, the Regional Council of Librarianship of the 1st Region has awarded the Rubens Borba Medal to outstanding professionals. Of this work — the present volume — Borba de Moraes writes: “from a scholarly point of view this French translation is the best edition, and for Brazilian studies the additions we have specified above [viz. the sacking of Bahia and the conquest of Olinda etc.] make it an indispensable work.”
From the collection of Frank Sherwin Streeter (1918-2006), purchased at his sale (“Important navigation, Pacific voyages, cartography, science) at Christie’s New York 17 April 2007, lot 309. Streeter was the son of the legendary Americana collector Thomas Streeter, whose sale catalogue has become a reference work in its own right. Some of his collection he inherited from his father (those he did not he would often buy back), but other volumes he added over many decades of collecting.
Alden & Landis 640/111; Borba de Moraes I.384 (this copy); cf. Burden 229-232; Cumming, Southeast 34; Phillips 1149; Sabin 38558; Streeter sale 37; Willems 382.
Item #SJF0004
Price: $58,000