SUMA DE GEOGRAPHIA Q[UE] TRATA DE TODAS LAS PARTIDAS Y PROVINCIAS DEL MUNDO: EN ESPECIAL DE LAS INDIAS. Y TRATA LARGEMENTE DEL ARTE DEL MAREAR.

Enciso, Martín Fernandez de:

Edité par Seville: Andres de Burgos, 1546.

A propos de cet article

The third edition, with additions, of a work of surpassing importance, comprising at once the first practical guide to sailing in American waters, the first navigational manual printed in Spain, and the first book printed in Spanish relating to America. It is also the first account of explorations of the Americas based on extended experiences. This book is an important cornerstone for any serious collection on sailing and navigation to the New World. Martín Fernández de Enciso (ca. 1470-ca. 1528), geographer and conquistador, was a native of Seville, and would have been aware of the details of the earliest voyages to the Indies as a young man. Although he probably went earlier, he can be definitely placed, well established as a lawyer and trader, in Hispaniola by 1508. In 1509 and 1510, Enciso joined expeditions of Alonso de Hojeda along the north coast of South America and then to Panama (it was on this expedition that Balboa first saw the Pacific). He continued to be involved in the Spanish conquest of the area, and served as an aid to the first governor there, a position he occupied in 1514. Sometime after this he returned to Spain, and published the SUMA DE GEOGRAPHIA in 1519. Enciso was the first writer to narrate the history and navigation of the New World based on broad personal experience of himself and others. Columbus and Vespucci had briefly told the story of their coastal voyages, and Peter Martyr had published, in 1516, the first of his collection of accounts which had come back to him in Spain, where he was an official of the Spanish court. But Enciso's book was based on his extensive personal experience of perhaps a decade of living and voyaging in the Indies, and the gathering of much oral information from others, possibly including Columbus' pilot, Juan de la Cosa. "Using a great variety of both oral and written sources plus his own experience, Enciso compiled a practical book with useful information, especially for pilots" - Delgado Gomez. Enciso's work was immediately recognized as invaluable, and it was used to instruct the young Charles I, who ascended the Spanish throne the year after its publication. A second edition followed in 1530, then a third in 1546, represented by the present copy. The fact that it was republished again twenty-seven years after the first edition demonstrates in continued usefulness and appeal, and numerous writers on New World history have praised it both as a navigational guide and a historical work. "A great hydrographer and explorer, his work is invaluable for the early geographical history of this continent" - Harrisse. This copy has quite a distinguished provenance. It bears the bookplate of the celebrated 19th-century Havana collection, the Museo de Montino, which was sold by New York auctioneers George A. Leavitt & Co. in 1877, and prior to that belonged to early 19th-century Spanish bibliographer B.J. Gallardo. It is also the copy that belonged to Harrison D. Horblit, the famed American collector of photography and books on natural science, mathematics, and navigation. All editions of Enciso's work have been extraordinarily rare in the market in the past fifty years. In that time, only three copies of the first edition have changed hands, including the Harmsworth-Horblit-Frank Streeter copy, which brought $288,000 at the Frank Streeter sale in 2007. The third edition is rarer still, and the present copy is apparently the only one to have circulated publicly since Rosenbach offered it in a 1938 catalogue, describing it as "A fine copy of an extremely rare and most important book." In the intervening years it was acquired by Horblit before it appeared in his famous sale in 1974. Furthermore, the USTC locates copies of the first edition at over thirty institutions worldwide, but copies of the third at just twelve. A foundational work in the history of navigation and the history of the Americas, and a fine copy that belonged to one of the great American book collectors. CHURCH.

N° de réf. du vendeur 53799

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: SUMA DE GEOGRAPHIA Q[UE] TRATA DE TODAS LAS PARTIDAS Y PROVINCIAS DEL MUNDO: EN ESPECIAL DE LAS INDIAS. Y TRATA LARGEMENTE DEL ARTE DEL MAREAR.
• Éditeur: Seville: Andres de Burgos, 1546.