John Huighen van Linschoten his Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies

Key Properties

Edition: First and only English edition, the unauthorised printing by John Wolfe (after the Dutch Itinerario of 1596)

Translator: William Phillip, at the suggestion of Richard Hakluyt

Language: English; text in two columns

Format: Small folio, leaf ca. 29 x 18.5 cm; 234 leaves, the letterpress complete

Binding: Contemporary limp vellum with ties, housed in a green morocco-backed case, the spine lettered VOYAGES, LINSCHOTEN, LONDON 1598

Illustration: Engraved general title; three letterpress part-titles, each with an engraved map vignette (Congo, the two hemispheres, Spain); thirty figures on twenty-nine double-page plates engraved by Joannes a Doetecum, printed from the original Dutch copperplates and still carrying their Dutch page references; four woodcut maps in the text

Not present: the nine folding maps and the three folding views engraved in London for this edition, and one Doetecum plate, the Caffres of Mozambique

Provenance: contemporary marginalia in places

Collation & Technical Description

Small folio. Collation by signatures: 1 leaf without signature-mark; A, 4 leaves; B to Q, each 6 leaves; R, 8 leaves; *S, 2 leaves; S to Aa, each 6 leaves; Bb and Cc, each 4 leaves; Dd to Pp, each 6 leaves; Qq, 7 leaves. Total 234 leaves. Engraved title, p. [i], verso blank; dedication by John Wolfe to Julius Caesar, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, recto of A to recto of A2; To the Reader, verso of A2 to recto of [A4]; First Book, pp. 1-197; part-title to the Second Book with the map of Congo; Second Book, pp. [199]-295 (295 misnumbered 259); part-title to the Third Book with the map of the two hemispheres; Third Book, pp. 307-447 (the pagination leaps from 296 to 307, without loss); part-title to the Fourth Book with the map of Spain; Fourth Book, pp. [451]-462. Nine pages carry misprinted numbers, as always in this edition. Woodcut maps in the text: Insula S. Laurentii (Madagascar), p. 7; Sumatra Insula, p. 32; Iava Maior, p. 33; Sancta Helena, p. 173.

Condition

A sound and attractive copy. The letterpress is complete: 234 leaves, collating as Church 321. Bound in contemporary limp vellum with ties, housed in a green morocco-backed case, the spine lettered VOYAGES, LINSCHOTEN, LONDON 1598. Early manuscript marginalia in places. The upper edge of pp. 7-9 and pp. 308-317 is cut short, as originally issued. Wanting the nine folding maps and the three folding views that were engraved in London for this edition, and wanting one plate of the Doetecum series, the Caffres of Mozambique, which belongs between the Arabs and Abyssinians and the King of Cochin on his elephant. The plates that are present are the original Dutch engravings, signed Ioann. a Doet. fec., with captions in Latin and Dutch and the Dutch page references still engraved at the foot; several are bound at the leaf their engraved reference calls for rather than where the Amsterdam binder's register of 1596 places them. A leaf-by-leaf collation is available on request.

References & Bibliography

Church 321. STC 15691. Sabin 41374. Alden & Landis, European Americana, 598/57. Hill 1025. Borba de Moraes I, 417. Tiele 683. On the illustration of the English edition: A. C. Burnell and P. A. Tiele (eds), The Voyage of John Huyghen van Linschoten to the East Indies, Hakluyt Society, London 1885, List of Illustrations in the Original English Edition.

Description

The first and only English edition of Van Linschoten's celebrated description of the East and West Indies, first published in Dutch as the Itinerario in 1596, and printed in London by John Wolfe without the consent of the Amsterdam publisher.

As a young man Van Linschoten sailed to the Indies in the service of the Fugger house and became secretary to Vincente da Fonseca, Archbishop of Goa and of all India, an ideal vantage point from which to question the Portuguese pilots who, returning from the Far East and the Spice Islands to Lisbon, were obliged to report first at Goa. Back in Holland in 1592 he compiled a handbook of the Indies drawn from this exclusive Portuguese knowledge and from the Spanish and Portuguese books published to date. Translated at the suggestion of Richard Hakluyt, it carried to England the navigational knowledge the Portuguese had guarded for a century.

The work is in four parts. The first, the Itinerario proper, describes the route to the Indies, living conditions, the merchandise to be had and the peoples encountered. The second describes Africa and the Americas. The third is a ruteiro or rutter, a pilot's guide for sailing into the Indies, and the fourth treats the revenues and costs of the Kings of Spain and Portugal in their Eastern and Western possessions.

What distinguishes this copy is its illustration. The nine folding maps that Wolfe had re-engraved in London are not present. In their place the volume carries the series of large double-page plates by Joannes a Doetecum, printed from the original Dutch copperplates of 1596 and bound in as they were, with their captions in Latin and Dutch and the Dutch page references still engraved at the foot. Burnell and Tiele observed in 1885 that nearly all the illustrations of the English edition were printed from the Dutch plates, and copies made up in this way belong to the history of the edition rather than to later confection. The series wants one plate, the Caffres of Mozambique.

The plates are the fullest visual record of Portuguese Asia made before the Dutch arrived: the Malays and the Javanese, the Chinese on foot and carried, the market and the streets of Goa, the Portuguese on horseback and in the palankin, their wives going to night service with husband and slaves, the widow-burning, the ambassador of Balaghat, the King of Cochin on his elephant, the people of Pegu and the Moluccas, the mosque and the pagodas, and the fruits and trees of the Indies down to the arbor triste. Three letterpress part-titles carry engraved map vignettes of Congo, the two hemispheres and Spain, and four woodcut maps appear in the text, among them the Sancta Helena at p. 173.

The book is in its contemporary limp vellum with the ties still present, in a green morocco-backed case, and carries early marginalia in places, the marks of a reader who used it. Complete copies retaining the London-engraved maps are of the greatest rarity; those maps were used so heavily by navigators that they are often missing, and a single one of them is a five-figure item in its own right. This copy is offered as what it is: the complete English text of 1598, in its contemporary binding, with the Dutch plates.

Historical Significance

The English Linschoten was translated by William Phillip at the suggestion of Richard Hakluyt, and carried to England the navigational knowledge the Portuguese had guarded for a century. 'This inestimable book, a treasure of all knowledge and learning relating to the East and West Indies and the navigation thither … has been in the highest esteem for nearly a century, and was given to each and every ship sailing to the Indies as a log-book' (Frederik Muller, Books, Maps & Plates on America and a Remarkable Collection of Early Voyages, Amsterdam, 1872). English captains were still quoting the book in their logs as late as the eighteenth century.

Provenance

From the collection of a private American collector, who recorded it as a pirated English edition containing original Van Doetecum prints, and noted that the maps were lacking; acquired from Frederik Muller, 2014. Acquired by Frederik Muller Rare Books, 2026.

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