Vespucci (Amerigo) Lettera delle isole nuovamente trovate in quattro suoi Viaggi [Fiorenza,1505]

8vo. pp. iv, [32]. Signatures: a-b6 c4. Original title page has title “Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle isole nuovamente trovate in quattro suoi viaggi.” Black letter. Includes facsimile of original title page, with woodcut. Headpieces.

Quaritch’s Reprints of Rare Books, I: one of 50 copies printed of a facsimile of the Tross-Court copy sold by Quaritch to ‘an American collector of the first order’ (i.e., Charles Kalbfleisch, from whom it passed to Robert Hoe (Hoe sale, part II, 1912, lot 3331; $8000 to Cyrus McCormick; now at Princeton)), with an anonymous preface by Michael Kearney.

This is the first facsimile reprint of the first edition of ‘the Soderini Letter’ (Florence: Antonio Tubini and Andrea Ghirlandi, 1505?), which recounts Vespucci’s ‘four voyages,’ including the almost certainly imaginary ‘first voyage’ of 1497, when he allegedly set foot on the North American mainland eight days before John Cabot, and a version of his perhaps equally fanciful ‘third voyage.’ In his Latin translation of the Soderini Letter (St Die, 1507) Martin Waldseemüller named the entire continental New World ‘America’ after its supposed discoverer. J. Sabin, A dictionary of books relating to America, from its discovery to the present time. New York, 1962, 99371, corrected by Alden and Landis, European Americana: 1493-1600. New York, 1980, I: 9.

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