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Among collectors of Americana, few books are more highly esteemed than the great collections of travels and voyages that occurred during the Age of Exploration. Avidly read in their own day by those fortunate few who had access to them, first editions of such grand compilations as Richard Hakluyt's Voyages still form the rare and costly nucleus around which serious collections of Americana are assembled. Among these magisterial works one is generally regarded as the most important ever published, Theodore de Bry's Grands and Petits Voyages, usually known simply as "de Bry." A Flemish engraver and bookseller, de Bry went to London in 1590 to prepare an illustrated account of French explorations in Florida. Hakluyt convinced him to delay publication of the French expeditions in favor of Thomas Hariot's account of Virginia, accompanied by John White's illustrations of Indian life in America. Hakluyt hoped that Hariot's account would generate public support for a rescue mission to the Roanoke colony. The book's success did facilitate White's return to America, but by that time no one was left in the "lost colony" to welcome him. De Bry and his heirs enjoyed greater success, for his compilation of illustrated voyages eventually expanded to fifty-seven parts published over a period of forty-four years. Shown opposite is a plate from volume thirteen of the Latin language edition, which depicts the abduction of Pocahontas by Captain Argall and his Indian allies. The complete Latin series given to the Virginia Historical Society was once owned by Charles-Pierre Claret de Fleurieu, who directed the operations of the French navy during the American Revolution. Such an edition of de Bry is exceedingly rare, but a set bound in eighteenth-century morocco, as this one is, is almost never encountered.
Image rights owned by the Virginia Historical Society. |
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