NAAUKEURIGE VERSAMELING DER GEDENK-WAARDIGSTE ZEE EN LAND-REYSEN NA OOST EN WEST-INDIËN..

Leyden: Pieter Vander Aa, 1707. 127 parts in twenty-eight volumes (with volume 13 in two), with 107 engraved folding maps and 505 folding plates. Later calf, spines gilt, gilt morocco labels. Some hinges cracked, spines chipping lightly, boards rubbed in places. Some toning and light foxing internally. Still a very good, handsome set. A complete first octavo edition of Pieter Van der Aa's comprehensive collection of memorable voyages translated into Dutch, which includes over 500 engraved views, as well as 107 engraved maps. Van der Aa's spectacular production gathers travel accounts of voyages from 1246-1696 from reputable sources such as De Bry, Hakluyt, Herrera, de Barros, Thevenot, and includes all of the earliest voyages to the Americas such as Columbus, Vasco de Gama, Cortes, Drake, as well as all other major and minor European voyages. A folio edition was also planned and begun simultaneously, but then abandoned and eventually completed in 1727.

Pieter Van der Aa was an accomplished Leiden publisher, who was eventually named chief printer for the city and for the university in 1715. His output consisted largely of repackaging known texts and maps into sets and atlases, as here. Though he lacked creativity, his work is nevertheless remarkable for the exactness and quality of its production in combination with the scope of the projects that he undertook. The texts compiled here are principally gathered from other published works and translated into Dutch, and many of the maps and engravings are taken from the work of Johann Lodewyk Gottfried, whom he credits on the titlepages of the later folio edition, but not in the present octavo volumes.

"This collection includes the most remarkable voyages and travels made by the Portuguese, Spaniards, English, Dutch and other nations in various parts of the world, though chiefly in the East and West Indies....Each of the narratives in the collection are separately paged and have separate title pages....[In the octavo edition,] they are placed chronologically or are intended so to be throughout twenty-eight volumes, beginning with the narrative of Duplan Carpin, the Pope's Nuncio in Tartary in 1246-7, and ending with GOD's PROTECTING PROVIDENCE of John Dickinson in 1696" - JCB. For a complete listing of voyages relating to America, see the entry in European Americana; for a complete listing of all voyages (though ordered differently), see the entry for the folio edition in the John Carter Brown Library catalogue.

Excessively rare as a complete set, and very seldom encountered on the market thus. EUROPEAN AMERICANA 707/2. JCB (1)III:88. JCB (1)III:398 (ref). LeCLERC 1059. NICHOLSON A5. SABIN 3. TIELE 5