[RALEIGH, Sir WALTER.] The History of the World. London: [Colophon: William Stansby for Walter Burre] 1614. Folio, eighteenth-century calf, rebacked, corners restored, joints broken, backstrip defective, "The Minde of the Front" and title leaves restored and with some facsimile, a few inner margins renewed at front, second, third and sixth plate cropped or cut slightly affecting engraved surface, the fifth and sixth plates inserted, occasional staining, mostly at front. FIRST EDITION, engraved title, with the blank leaves [Kkk 4] and 7C6, 8 engraved maps and plates, "The desert Arabia" colored by hand.

Details

[RALEIGH, Sir WALTER.] The History of the World. London: [Colophon: William Stansby for Walter Burre] 1614. Folio, eighteenth-century calf, rebacked, corners restored, joints broken, backstrip defective, "The Minde of the Front" and title leaves restored and with some facsimile, a few inner margins renewed at front, second, third and sixth plate cropped or cut slightly affecting engraved surface, the fifth and sixth plates inserted, occasional staining, mostly at front. FIRST EDITION, engraved title, with the blank leaves [Kkk 4] and 7C6, 8 engraved maps and plates, "The desert Arabia" colored by hand.

Composed while its author languished in the Tower from 1603, the work
was registered in 1611 but its printing took more than three years to
complete. It was issued anonymously and suppressed by the government
of James I, whose pro-Spanish inclination had been the cause of Raleigh's confinement. "Sir Walter Raleigh or Raleigh can be taken as the epitome of the Elizabethan idea of a courtier and politician, sailor and explorer...He was among the first Englishmen to envisage clearly that the Americas should be the principal goal of English overseas expansion, the ultimate aim of which was to be the supersession of the Spanish by an English empire" -- Printing and the Mind of Man 117; STC 20637; Pforzheimer 820; Sabin 67560.

Provenance: Thos. Jelf Powys, Esq., eighteenth-century bookplate