HISTORIA NAVIGATIONIS IN BRASILIAM QUAE ET AMERICA DICITUR.
Léry, Jean:
Geneva. 1594. [58],340,[15]pp. plus seven full-page woodcuts and one folding plate. Later vellum, lacking ties, manuscript title on spine. Bookseller's label and auction catalogue entry affixed to front pastedown, hinges slightly tender, moderate tanning. A very good copy. In a half morocco box. The unexpurgated and second Latin edition of Jean de Léry's classic account, and the fifth overall, preceded by French editions of 1578, 1580 and 1585, and a first Latin edition of 1586. All of the early editions are rare. Léry, a Protestant pastor, came to Brazil in 1556 to join a colony founded by Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon, a French naval officer who had earlier attempted to help the Huguenots escape religious persecution in France. Ironically, Léry and other Protestant members were forced to leave the colony located on an island in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro as a result of the religious persecution provoked by Villegagnon who had not intended on establishing a Protestant refuge (these passages were suppressed in the French editions OF HISTORIA... but are contained herein). During the majority of Léry's stay, however, he lived with the Indians. Lévi-Strauss, noted anthropologist and great authority on Brazilian ethnography, credits him with the most accurate observations on the Tupi Indians made in the 16th century, and calls his work one of the classics of anthropological observation. The fascinating woodcuts depict various scenes from quotidien Tupi ritual and includes observations of various flora and fauna. BORBA DE MORAES, p.471. EUROPEAN AMERICANA 594/32. SABIN 40154. JCB (3)I:333.
(Item ID: WRCAM39253) $12,500.00