First Edition of Ogilby's "Africa"
Africa:. being an accurate description of the regions of Aegypt, Barbary, Lybia, and Billedulgerid, the land of Negroes, Guinee, Aethiopia, and the Abyssines, with all the adjacent islands, either in the Mediterranean, Atlantick, Southern, or Oriental Sea, belonging thereunto. With the several denominations of their coasts, harbors, creeks, rivers, lakes, cities, towns, castles, and villages. Their customs, modes, and manners, languages, religions, and inexhaustible treasure; with their governments and policy, variety of trade and barter, and also of their vvonderful plants, beasts, birds, and serpents. Collected and translated from the most authentick authors, and augmented with later observations; illustrated with notes, and adorn'd with peculiar maps, and proper sculptures, by John Ogilby Esq; Master of His Majesties Revels in the Kingdom of Ireland.
London: Printed by Tho. Johnson for the author, 1670.
Full Description:
OGILBY, John. Africa: being an accurate description of the regions of Aegypt, Barbary, Lybia, and Billedulgerid, the land of Negroes, Guinee, Aethiopia, and the Abyssines, with all the adjacent islands, either in the Mediterranean, Atlantick, Southern, or Oriental Sea, belonging thereunto. With the several denominations of their coasts, harbors, creeks, rivers, lakes, cities, towns, castles, and villages. Their customs, modes, and manners, languages, religions, and inexhaustible treasure; with their governments and policy, variety of trade and barter, and also of their vvonderful plants, beasts, birds, and serpents. Collected and translated from the most authentick authors, and augmented with later observations; illustrated with notes, and adorn'd with peculiar maps, and proper sculptures, by John Ogilby Esq; Master of His Majesties Revels in the Kingdom of Ireland. London: Printed by Tho. Johnson for the author, 1670.
First edition. Folio (16 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches; 416 x 265 mm). [20], 767, [1, directions to binder] pp. Bound with a half-title. With intricately engraved head- and tail-pieces and initials. Complete with a total of fifty-three engraved plates, including the engraved title and large folding map of Africa after Jacob van Meurs. Additionally, forty-three are double-page and 8 are single-pages. Of the 8 single page plates, 5 contain two images each. One of these single page, double image plates has been cut in half and the two images have been inserted in their page-marked spots (ie page 352 and 385. There are also forty-six intertextual engravings and and nine letterpress tables inserted. Title-page is printed in red and black.
Contemporary full calf, rebacked with original spine laid down. Board double-ruled in gilt. Spine stamped in gilt in compartments. Two newer spine labels, lettered in gilt. All edges speckled red. Some mild rubbing to boards. Some toning to the maps of Ethiopia, Bansa Salvador and Madagascar. A small marginal repair to leaf 3I3, not affecting text. Some dampstaining to bottom margin of leaves 3S-3T. Leaves from begining through signature H with a minor ripple through the middle. Previous owner's armorial bookplate on front pastedown. Overall a very good copy, complete copy.
This is a handsome copy of Ogilby's rare Africa, what was to be the first volume in a series of encyclopediac atlases that Ogilby only partially completed. Notably learned and thorough, the work is arguably one of the most extensive studies of Africa that had theretofore been published in England or anywhere else. The work may be most well-known for the large folding map of African continent, but it also includes numerous double-page maps featuring copperplate engravings of diverse African locales including Abyssinia, Congo, and Madagascar; as well as plates and intertextual engravings featuring natural history subjects, views of native life, and maritime views of African ports, as well as several illustrations of pyramids, mummies, and Egyptian antiquities.
John Ogilby (1600-1676) plied many trades, including dance master and theatre proprietor, before finally setting up a large printing house in the wake of the Great Fire. Subsequently Charles II bestowed upon him the honor of being "king's cosmographer and geographic printer". Though Ogilby's attempts at poetry are famously ridiculed by Pope in The Dunciad and by Dryden in MacFlecknoe, for which his name "has become almost proverbial for a bad poet", he is also well known for having "printed many splendid books, mostly in folio; several [of which] were illustrated, or as he expressed it, 'adorned with sculpture,' by Hollar and other eminent engravers" (DNB). Africa belongs to a group of about half a dozen "books of geography and topography" that Ogilby printed "during the last years of his life (DNB). Like his other folio works, Ogilby's geographical and topographical works are valued for their accomplished copperplate engravings of maps, plans, and illustrations.
Cox v.1, p. 361. Wing O-163.
HBS 69511.
$8,500.
Price: $8,500.00
Item #69511