Search Results: Titles starting with N from Antiquariaat FORUM BV

[20], 529; [6], 449, [87] pp.Best (and first Dutch) edition of the most important account of the Cape of Good Hope and one of the most important works of all time on South Africa, with twice as many copperplates as the first German edition. Much of the material is based on Kolbe's own observations in the years 1705 to 1713, but he also compares them with the observations and theories of earlier writers. The zoological plates show numerous mammals, birds, fish and other marine animals and reptiles, and other plates cover topography, agriculture, hunting, buildings, etc. In addition to these subjects, the text provides detailed information on the customs and habits of the Hottentots, a well-documented account of the VOC government of the Cape, the earliest list of South African animals and much information about plants. It remains an essential primary source for any study of South Africa. Some minor thumbing and foxing in the margins of the textleaves, some of the folds of the plates reinforced and a… Read More

[16], 358 pp.; [1] errata l.First edition of a rare Americanum. Jakob Baegert (1717-1772), a German Jesuit, wrote an interesting and by no means glowing account of the natives and the country "California" (the Baja Peninsula). Cowan comments in his note that, "according to his accounts the country was absolutely unfit for habitation; it was inhabited by wild and ferocious beasts; peopled by cruel and inhospitable savages; water was unfit to use; wood was scarce; the soil would not sustain life". It was written to disabuse the public mind as to the rumoured mineral riches and pearls from California, which had spread from Mexico to Madrid, and Germany. The book is nonetheless filled with valuable ethnographical and historical information. Chapter 20 is devoted to the Waicuri language of the California Indians. The map shows the location of the many Jesuit missions in the Baja, and shows Baegert's route along the west coast of Mexico in 1751 and his return route in 1768, after the expulsion of the… Read More

[1], 40, [1] double ll.Beautiful copy of a rare and gorgeously illustrated woodblock tour of sights in Nagasaki and surroundings, giving special attention to the Dutch (and Chinese) traders, with text mostly in Japanese characters and woodcuts with landscapes, interiors, festival processions, and city views by Isono Bunsai (also known as Bunsai Madaki). One of the printed inscriptions notes that the book “offers a variety of Nagasaki prints depicting objects from abroad by the Chinese and red hairs [meaning the Dutch] as well as woodcuts depicting these foreigners''. The book gives a good view of the manners, practices and the daily life of both Chinese and Western traders living in Nagasaki, especially the Dutch at Dejima, who were granted special privileges to trade with Japan. This genre of single souvenir prints and collections of prints from Nagasaki proved very popular with both the Japanese and the foreign merchants visiting Nagasaki. The binding and the manuscript title label on the front… Read More

IV, [5]-46 pp.First edition of the English translation of an eye-witness account of slavery in Africa. The French writer Jacques Salbigoton Quesné (1778-1859) mentions in the introduction that one day he heard of a man returning to Paris after being enslaved for 34 years in Africa. Reckoning his tale must be very suitable for publication, he invited this man, Pierre Joseph Dumont, to his house. "It was agreed between us, that he should repair to my house every day, to furnish me with data that were to serve as a basis of an history of the thirty-seven years of his absence" (introduction). Dupont gives detailed information on the lives of Christian slaves: where they live, what they wear and eat, what happens when one gets sick or commits suicide, how the Arab masters treat them, etc.Offsetting of the frontispiece to the title-page, some occasional foxing. Otherwise in good condition, wholly untrimmed.l L. Croegaert, The African continent, p. 124; Huntress 198C; not in Hogg.

XXVI, [1], [1 blank], 472; IV, 330, [1], 331-452 pp.First octavo edition of Beechey's account of his celebrated Pacific voyage, which was preceded by a quarto edition in the same year. It "is one of the most valuable of modern voyages and relates extensive visits to Pitcairn Island, Easter Island, the Tuamotu Archipelago, the Society Islands, the Mangareva (Gambier) Islands, and Tahiti, Alaska, Hawaii, Macao, Okinawa, and the coast of California" (Hill).Frederick William Beechey (1796-1856), English naval officer and hydrographer, was appointed to command the Blossom and to sail to the Bering Strait to assist in finding a northwest passage. In the winter and spring of 1826-1827 he visited California, Hawaii, Macao, the Ryukyu Islands (Japan) and the Philippines. The account also includes valuable descriptions of San Francisco and Monterey before the American conquest, with many details regarding the mission among the indigenous Americans.The plates include portraits of John Adams, indigenous Alaskans… Read More

XIV, 492; XI, [1 blank], 496 pp.First edition of a highly entertaining combination of travel writing and diplomatic history. It describes the diplomatic missions of the Earl of Elgin to China and Japan in 1857-1859, which ended in various treaties opening the countries to the British. In his capacity as private secretary to Lord Elgin, Oliphant was present at all the major events and published his account of the brazen gunboat diplomacy immediately after his return to Great-Britain. Besides witnessing the bombardment of Canton and the siege of Tientsin, Oliphant also gives vivid accounts of life and events in China and Japan, including his delights in eating with chopsticks. With an owner's stamp "Joseph O. Buch" at the back of the first flyleaf in both volumes. Minor foxing in the plates and a tear in the frontispiece of vol. 1 repaired with tape. Binding chafed at the extremities, hinges with some cracks and tops of the spines damaged. Otherwise in good condition. A beautifully bound edition of a… Read More

XIII, [2], 376 pp.Second edition of this collection of letters on Tripoli, containing valuable information on the court of the Bashaw of Tripoli, being one of the few accounts made publicly known of the private manners of this African despot. The letters were written by Miss Tully, the sister-in-law of the late Richard Tully, British Consul in Tripoli (1783-1793), as is mentioned in the preface. Edwards in his Catalogue of books on Africa attributes the letters to Richard Tully. Her family was very intimate with that of the Bashaw, which gave the author the opportunity to collect this large amount of specific information.First published in 1816, the letters detail every aspect of life at the court and the life of the ordinary people, containing exact descriptions of houses, mosques, clothing, people and customs. The work contains a list of the names of the Royal Family of Tripoli, an appendix with Moorish vocabulary, and an index. In 1983 a facsimile edition of this edition was published. An Arabic… Read More

[16], 311, [60] ll.First edition of Pliny's Natural history as edited by Johannes Caesarius (1468-1550), a humanist and close friend of Erasmus. Pliny's Natural history is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day and purports to cover the entire field of ancient knowledge, based on the best authorities available at the time. It encompasses the fields of botany, zoology, astronomy, geology and mineralogy as well as the exploitation of those resources. It remains a standard work for the Roman period and the advances in technology and understanding of natural phenomena at the time. Pliny's accounts of some technical advances are the only sources for those inventions, such as hushing (using water to wash away soil) in mining technology or the use of water mills for crushing or grinding grain. Archaeological excavations have confirmed much of what he wrote. ''We know from Pliny that there were important pearl fisheries in the Gulf … Pliny identifies Tylos… Read More

[8] (title and index) ll.; 36 (Heft 1-18); 16 (Heft 26-33); 6 (Heft 19-21); 10 (Heft 22-25); 4 (Supplement) pp.First edition of the complete series of Karl Joseph Brodtmann's lithographed natural history plates, most showing animals, including the plates in the supplement, not mentioned by Winkler. Brodtmann (1787-1862) was a Swiss artist, lithographer and printmaker. He is especially known for his beautiful and vivid lithographs of animals, respecting scientific accuracy. The present work contains 6 series with a total of 144 lithographs by Brodtmann, each series separately numbered, opening with a series of 12 plates showing people from all over the world, with their costumes, including East Indians, Sandwich Islanders and Inuits. The second series, forming the largest part of the work with 60 plates, shows other mammals: monkeys, bears, canidae (including wolves and hyenas) and felidae (including lions, tigers and panthers), horses and their riders (including an Arabian horse), mice, rats, bats,… Read More

XXIV, 307, [4], [1 blank]; 140, [2] pp.Ad 1: 1780 edition of the adventures of the French sailor and merchant Pierre Viaud (1725), who sailed along the Gulf Coast of Florida and shipwrecked on a reef near Dog Island. As full of drama as an Indiana Jones adventure, Viaud's story became a bestseller in Europe and is still important for its early description of Florida. Ad 2: First edition of the voyage of the French horticulturist Pierre Poivre (1719-1786) to Cape of Good Hope, Madagascar, Siam, Cambodia, China, etc. Poivre travelled as missionary to China and southeast Asia, and later held some positions on Mauritius, where he created a botanical garden.With two bookplates on paste-down ("A. Jouffray" and "Colonel Ph. Milon"), a manuscript inscription on half-title of ad 1, and another on the title-page of ad 2. Overall in very good condition.l Ad 1: Huntress 80C; Polak 9438; Sabin 99412; ad 2: Cordier, Bibliotheca Indosinica, col. 2495; Kress B.222; Sabin 63716.

XIV, [1], [1 blank], 351, [1 blank] pp.Second edition in the original Portuguese of one of the most important works of Portuguese literature, by the poet, painter and musician Jeronimo Corte Real (ca. 1533-1590), first published in 1594. After Camões, Corte Real is considered the greatest Portuguese epic poet. His Sepúlveda " is a narrative of the disastrous shipwreck and ultimate fate of Manoel de Sousa de Sepúlveda, of Donna Leonora, his wife, and their children on their voyage from India to Portugal, on board the great galleon Saint John, which was lost at the Cape of Good Hope on the Coast of Natal.With an owner's inscription on title-page. In good condition, some small defects. Binding with a small chip at the foot of the spine and some small scuff marks. Influential second edition of a great Portuguese epic poem.l Innocêncio III, 262-263 & X, 128; Palau IV, 63005; Porbase (2 copies); SAB I, p. 633.

[8], 357, [3], 324, [4] pp.First edition of Olfert Dapper's important description of the Middle East. The first part is devoted to Mesopotamia or Algizira, Babylonia, Assyria and Anatolia, while the second is entirely devoted to Arabia. The work is especially important for the original and new information on Islam, Arabic science, astronomy, philosophy and historiography. The fine plates and illustrations include views of Mount Sinai, Bagdad, Basra, Nineveh, Abydos, Smyrna, Aden, Muscat and Mocha. The second part includes a description of coffee: "In Arabia Felix alone, and in no other place of the whole world, there grows a seed or corn or bean shrub which the Arabs call 'Bon' or 'Ban', of which they prepare a drink by cooking it in water over the fire . . ." (part 2, pp. 61-62). Bookseller's ticket on pastedown. Slightly browned throughout. Joints cracked at the head. In very good condition.l Atabey 322; Hünersdorff, Coffee, p. 386; Slot, B.J. The Arabs of the Gulf, p. 412; Tiele, Bibl. 300.

[6], 428, 349, [16]; [1], 121, [4] pp.First impression of the second revised Dutch edition of Dapper's famous description of Africa. The Amsterdam author Olfert Dapper (1636-1689) was celebrated by his contemporaries for his descriptions of far away lands. He started his writing career with a description of Amsterdam, the city where he lived all his life. His description of the entire continent of Africa and its islands was first published in 1668, which was still early in his career. It is now accepted as his best work and was translated into German and English in 1670, and into French in 1686. The present second edition appeared in 1676 and was much enlarged.Dapper's attention was mainly drawn to the Islamic North of Africa, with extensive and thorough descriptions of the area between Morocco and Egypt (with a magnificent illustration of pyramids) and the Ethiopian Empire (Abyssinia). Its maps of the whole of Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia include the Arabian peninsula as far as the Persian Gulf and… Read More

[8], 357, [3], 324, [4] pp.First edition of Olfert Dapper's important description of the Middle East. The first part is devoted to Mesopotamia or Algizira, Babylonia, Assyria and Anatolia, while the second is entirely devoted to Arabia. The work is especially important for the original and new information on Islam, Arabic science, astronomy, philosophy and historiography. Besides a map of Arabia, the fine plates include views of Mount Sinai, Bagdad, Basra, Nineveh, Abydos, Smyrna, Aden, Muscat, Mocha and the Tower of Babel. The second part includes a description of coffee: "In Arabia Felix alone, and in no other place of the whole world, there grows a seed or corn or bean shrub which the Arabs call 'Bon' or 'Ban', of which they prepare a drink by cooking it in water over the fire ..." (part 2, pp. 61-62). The present copy includes a plate showing the plants "Abelmosch", "Semsen" and "Sambak", not called for in the binder's instructions, but included in some copies.Vellum on inside front board partly… Read More

[1], [1 blank], 182, [13], [1 blank] pp.First edition of the Dutch translation of a work on travels through Europe, undertaken and written by Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715). Burnet was a Scottish historian, philosopher, and later Bishop of Salisbury. In 1685 Burnet left Great-Brittain to travel Europe, where he visited the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. During his stay in the Netherlands, Burnet got exiled from England by King James II, after writing a pamphlet advising the Dutch prince William and his wife Mary not to support James for the repeal of the Test Act. The text is written in the form of letters, starting in Zurich, to Milan, Florence, Rome, and ending in Nijmegen, where he noted everything that "seemed most remarkable" and was unheard of in any other travelogue.Binding rubbed along the extremities, paper cracked at the hinges (hinges still firm) and spine discoloured. Title-page reattached (restored in the gutter), some spots and smudges throughout and a few leaves… Read More

34, [2 blank], 31 pp.Ad 1: Rare first and only edition of a Neo-Latin poem on ships and shipbuilding, including several lines on the etymology of the various terms used to describe a ship, which are depicted on a folding engraving. Although elegantly composed, the author seemingly made several educated guesses as to the true origin of several terms. Charleval "had neglected to research the true origins of the terms which he employed" (Jal).Ad 2: Rare first and only edition of a Neo-Latin poem on the properties of monkeys. As in singerie paintings, in which monkeys imitate human behaviour, the monkeys in the poem are in fact a mirror for human behaviour.Charles-François de Charleval (1667-1747) was a French Neo-Latin poet and a member of the Jesuit order.With a stamp and shelf-mark of René Moreux (1876-1957) on the back of the first title-page. Binding restored. With the plate and text of ad 1 somewhat shaved; a good copy.l Ad 1: Backer & Sommervogel II, col. 1075, nr. 2; CCfr (3 copies); Jal,… Read More

[2], "234" [= 236], [10] pp.Rare first edition of Jan II van Ghelen's Dutch translation of Sebastian Brant's famous Ship of fools, a telling satire on the foolishness of men. The book really is a picture book, each act of folly depicted in a large woodcut in which the fool with cap and bells plays the main role, the text explaining the woodcut and its moral. It first appeared in German in 1494, in Latin in 1497, and went through hundreds of editions in many languages, as well as spin-offs of various kinds, including a song by The Grateful Dead in 1974. A Dutch translation appeared in Paris in 1500 and a few more in the following decades, including one at Antwerp in 1548, but the present edition was far more influential and was long even cited as the first.Sebastian Brandt (1457-1521) is famous largely for this verse satire, in which more than a hundred fools set sail in search of a fool's paradise. Each humourously satirizes one particular vice or folly of Brant's day, sparing neither clergy nor… Read More

[2] pp., [60] engraved ll.Very rare second separate edition of a series of sixty views of ruins, castles and noble residences, drawn mostly by Roeland Roghman (Rochman), engraved by Jacob Schynvoet and first published in 1711. Most are in the province of Holland, but some come from other parts of the Netherlands. Each view has a panel at the foot with the title, often on a scroll or drapery. Schynvoet signed most with only his initials, but one that he drew himself he signed, "J. Schynvoet ad Vivum del. et fec." One caption indicates that the building no longer existed when the plate was engraved. The views are bound in alphabetical order by the name of the house or the place where it is located, as indicated by the list of plates, but fifteen of the views are lettered A-P at lower right, indicating a different order.These 60 views appeared earlier in Ludolf Smids, Schatkamer der Nederlandse Oudheden (Amsterdam 1711), by the same publisher, and in its later editions. The first separate publication of… Read More

First and only edition of an extensive and well-illustrated collection of Dutch voyages from the late 16th century to the second half of the 18th century, primarily to the East Indies, but also including voyages to China, Japan, Australia and Surinam. Volumes I-III contain voyages in search of a Northeast Passage and to the East Indies before the establishment of the VOC (Willem Barentsz, Houtman, Van Neck & Warwyk, Van Noort, Jacob Heemskerk, Spilbergen, etc.). Volumes IV-XIII are devoted to VOC voyages to the East Indies, Africa, the Indian Ocean, Japan, China and the Pacific (Warwyck, Van der Haghen, Matelief, Van Caerden, Verhoeven, Van den Broecke, Spilbergen, Bontekoe, Tasman, Schouten, Hagenaar, De Graaf, Hamel, Roggeveen, etc.) and include the ill-fated voyages of the Arion (shipwrecked in the Chinese Sea on a voyage from Batavia to Japan) Blydorp, Rustenwerk and Nyenburg. The final volume includes accounts of the West Indies (Piet Hein, Johan Nieuhof, Adriaan van Berkel and Jan Erasmus… Read More

Magnificent illustration of a branch of a Mespilus germanica, printed in colour and delicately finished by hand. This small fruit-bearing tree, commonly known as medlar, is native to southwest Asia and south eastern Europe. It is originally part of a series of flower prints by Gerard van Spaendonck, the only engraved work published during his lifetime, "entitled Fleurs dessinées d'après Nature, which contains twenty-four magnificent drawings, brilliantly interpreted in stipple by P.F. Le Grand and other engravers. These are probably the finest engravings of flowers ever made" (Blunt) and "they are among the most breath-taking series of plates in the [Hunt] library" (Hunt). The series was originally published in 6 parts with 4 plates and available printed in black, printed in colour, or (as in the present case) printed in colour and finished by hand.Gerard van Spaendonck (1746-1822) was a proponent of the Dutch school of floral painting. He singlehandedly transformed the genre of flower painting in… Read More