NOVUS ORBIS REGIONUM AC INSULARUM VETERIBUS INCOGNITARUM UNA CUM TABULA COSMOGRAPHICA, & ALIQUOT ALLIS CONSIMILIS ARGUMENTI LIBELLIS, QUORUM OMNIUM CATALOGUS SEQUENTI PATEBIT PAGINA. HIS ACCESSIT COPIOSUS RERUM MEMORABILIUM INDEX - ATA UIAM INUENIENT

Basel: Basileae Apud Io. Hervagium, Mense Martio, 1532. First Edition. Leather-bound (Vellum). Good Plus. Folio.IN LATIN. No Map. Vellum.Text 30.5 x 20 cm. Manuscript title to spine. Vellum stained (as per usual) and apart from a very small tear near top of spine, is in lovely and solid condition. Lacks the (rarely seen) woodcut map of the world ("Typus Cosmographicus Universalis"), and lacks Jehan Petit's printer's device to title page, but this device (bust on a pedestal) is present on verso of last leaf. Very light toning throughout, and darkening and tidelines to first 170 or so pages, but restricted to very wide margins (not text). Additional tidelines at bottom to final 30 pages, and again, with no effect upon the clarity of the text. Pages are supple with a nice, easy-to-read typeface.

Simon Grynaeus wrote the preface ("Declaratio") but John Huttich alone compiled this massive and invaluable historical work. (Later editions dropped this preface because it contained text critical of The Inquisition.

One title page variant noted in WorldCat). Index complete. Collates complete, but as usual skips 578- 581 and 584, 585, 584. Final leaf "Index Ternionum" and on the verso Jehan Petit's printer's device of a bust on a pedestal. In-text woodcuts (DropCaps).

FIRST EDITION of one of the earliest accounts of exploration in the Americas -- a very early compendium of travels and explorations. The most complete edition of this important and rare collection of 15th and 16th century voyages. The work contains accounts of the voyages of Cadamosto, the three voyages of Columbus, Nino, Pinzon, Vespucius, Cabral, Marco Polo, and part of the Fourth Decade (i.s., Chapter) of Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, an Italian historian in the employ of Spain, who wrote the first accounts of explorations in Central and South America.

(Sabin 34100). As for the absence of the map in this copy, Harrisse (in his Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima) wrote: "...Notwithstanding the statement in Mr. Grenville's Catalogue respecting the frequent absence of the map, "there is no doubt but that a map does belong to the work...Mr. Muller has reproduced ten copies in exact facsimile" Harrisse remarks: "Whether they were the maps really belonging to the work, and described by Munster, we are unable to say, as no two copies of this edition had the same."