The Book that “sealed the fate of ‘America’ as the name of the New World”

£50,000

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Cosmographei,

oder beschreibung aller lander, herrschafften, fürnemsten...

MÜNSTER, Sebastian
Basel,
Heinrich Petri,
1550
Folio (330 by 215mm). Letterpress title-page with woodcut architectural border, 111 woodcut maps, plans, and views, including 63 double-page, illustrated with over 900 vignette woodcuts; contemporary panelled pigskin over bevelled oak boards, roll-tooled border containing small portraits, double central panels composed of different flower roll tools, original brass clasps and catches, manuscript title on a paper label on the spine, in five compartments separated by raised bands, marginal annotations in two hands, including in Hebrew, a few small tears in top and bottom margins, two affecting text, one skilfully repaired, water stains towards the end in the bottom margins.
330 by 215mm. (13 by 8.5 inches).
23093

To scale:

notes:

notes:

A fine example of Sebastian Münster's "Cosmography", containing the first separate printed map of the Western Hemisphere; the first "set" of maps of the four continents, and the first printed map to name the Pacific Ocean.

The cartography

While individual continents had been mapped as entities, in print, before 1540 (Africa in Montalboddo's 'Itinerarium Portugallesium', 1508; Europe by Waldseemüller, 1511; America by Stobniza, 1512; Asia in Münster's e...

bibliography:

bibliography:

BL, T.MUN-1c; Burden, 12; Burmeister, 87; Graesse, IV: 622; Oehme, 'Introduction fo the Facsimile of the 1550 Edition of Münster's Cosmographia'; Ruland, 84-97; Sabin, 51380; Shirley, [Atlases], T.MUN-1c.

provenance:

provenance:

Provenance: 1. Otto Schäfer Stiftung, Schweinfurt, Germany; 2. Ex Libris Dr F Buffner on the front pastedown; 3. Library stamp on title-page