| John Ogilby — Africa: being an Accurate Description of the Regions of Aegypt, Barbary , Lybia, and Billedulgerid |
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Africa: being an Accurate Description of the Regions of Aegypt, Barbary , Lybia, and Billedulgerid |
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Folio (16 2/8 x 10 2/8 inches). Letterpress title-page printed in red and black (lacking half-title, preliminaries and last 3 leaves soiled, some spotting and browning throughout, small ink stain on page 614). Engraved frontispiece, fine large engraved folding map of Africa, and one folding double-page view, 42 double-page maps and views, 9 leaves with 14 plates, and numerous engraved vignettes in the text, head-pieces and initials (some maps and views quite brown, repaired tear to Salvador plate, one or two fold breaks and short marginal tears, edges of Loanda plate cropped). Modern speckled paneled calf antique. First edition, AND A HANDSOME COPY, of the first of Ogilby's celebrated atlases, effusively dedicated to the newly restored Charles II, and with a long preface in which Ogilby details his writing and publishing as a career, beginning with his effort at translating Virgil and Aesop, and his own composition, most of which were lost with his house and his store in the Great Fire of London in 1666, before returning to prose: "Ifirst flew at the highest and best Poetic Authors; so now as much ambitious, I pitch'd upon the like Accomplishment in Prose, and no less sereves my turn, than the Reducement of the whole World, viz. A New and Accurate Description of the Four Regions thereof, the first of which being AFRICA; wherein, having made some Progress, still Collecting more Materials toward the Compleating of so great a Work, a Volume lately Publish'd beyond Sea in Low-Dutch, came to my hands, full of new Discoveries, being my chief and onely Business to enquire after, set forth by Dr. O. Dapper, a Discreet and Painful Author, whose large Addition, added to my own Endeavours, hath much Accelerated the Work " John Ogilby had led a full and interesting life even before began printing the famous series of travel books that bear his name, of which " America " is the second (preceded by " Africa " in ). He was an investor in the Virginia Company lottery; a renowned dancer, even owning his own dancing school and dancing before the King; founder and managing director of the first theatre in Dublin . Ogilby only turned to publishing after an accident left him lame and he was no longer able to dance, and the rise to power of Oliver Cromwell made frivolities like dancing unfashionable. Wing O-163. Lowndes III, p.1719; Wing O-163. |
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