The first Three English Books on America [? 1511] - 1555 A.D.

Guter Zustand. Einband leicht berieben, Ecken leicht besto�n, Seitenschnitt leicht beschmutzt, Seiten altersbedingt leicht vergilbt / Good condition. Binding slightly rubbed, corners slightly bumped, page edges slightly soiled, pages slightly yellowed due to age. - Aus dem Vorwort / From the Preface: Each of the three Texts in this Volume is of great rarity; the firft two are extraordinarily fcarce. The prefent impression of them was begun fo far back as 1870, and was nearly finished by 1872; when it came to a stand still through the great pressure of other work on all concerned, but more especially on myself. For then, there came to me the overpowering vocation, for the sake of the Literature of our Golden Age, of attempting (fingle-handed though it might be, and when every one else forfook it and fled) the printing of A Transcript of the Regislers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554-1646 a.d. through the toil and anxiety of the years 1873 to 1877, that great piece of work was religioufly and accurately accompliihed, in four Demy 4to volumes, containing in all tome 2,800 p.p.: and thus the Bibliography of Sidney, Spenfer, Shakefpeare, Bacon, Ben Jonson, and their contemporaries, was safely secured from destruction or oblivion, to the end of time. Other circumstances then intervened; so that it was not till January 1885, on the occasion of my first visit to Edinburgh (where the book was in hand), that I was able to resume it. Once, however, the reproduction was again taken up, it was resolutely pushed through to its completion. This Volume cannot fail to interest the cultivated reader. One is able therein to look out on the New World as its Discoverers and first Explorers looked upon it. Now-a-days, this Globe has but few geographical mysteries; and it is losing its romance as fast as it is losing its wild beasts. In the following Texts, however, the Wonderment of its Discovery in all its freshness, is preserved, as in amber, for all time : and they also contain notices of not a few barbaric civilizations which have long since passed away from off the face of the earth.