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WYTFLIET, Corneille (late 16th/early 17th century). Histoire universelle des indes, orientales et occidentales . Douai: François Fabri, 1605.
WYTFLIET, Corneille (late 16th/early 17th century). Histoire universelle des indes, orientales et occidentales . Douai: François Fabri, 1605. Two parts in one volume, 2° (182 x 192 mm). Engraved title page, 23 engraved maps, consisting of 19 double-page maps including a double-hemisphere world map (Shirley 207) after Rumold Mercator and 18 maps of the Americas, and 4 half-page maps of Japan, India, China and the Philippines. (A few small intermittent stains.) 17th-century limp vellum (hinges cracked, some soiling). FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH. Part one is a translation of Wytfliet's Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum , first published at Louvain in 1597: the first atlas devoted entirely to the Americas. The second part, with its mention of Cabral’s discovery of Brazil, may owe something to the accounts of the East Indies by Magini and others. Editions of this translation were published by the same Douai printer in 1605 and 1607 (see next lot), each edition incorporating new material. Although several of the handsome American maps derive from Petrus Plancius's world map of 1592, they abound in cartographic innovations. They include, for example, the first printed map of California and the southwest (Burden 106), the most accurate map of the east coast to appear until the publication of Johannes de Laet's Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien in 1630 (Burden 103), and the first map to use "Canada" in its title (Burden 102). The four small maps, which first appeared in the 1605 edition, include the second known printed map of the Philippine Islands. Alden & Landis 605/129; Borba de Moraes II:381; Burden 100-107; Chadenat 4958; JCB (1919) II, p. 36; McCorkle 597.3; Nordenskiöld 309; Phillips Atlases 1143; Sabin 105699; Shirley 207n (“On account of the title of his book several early authorities have erroneously classified Wytfliet's work among the later editions of Ptolemy. However the text is entirely concerned with the discovery, natural history and geography of the New World, and the eighteen regional maps are likewise solely of this area”).