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THE LORD CARLETON -- BARLOW COPY. First edition, large paper copy. Folio in 4s (15 1/16" x 10", 381mm x 254mm). [Full collation available.] With 207 engraved plates, of which 79 are folding and 98 are integral to the text; and 11 woodcut illustrations integral to the text. Bound in contemporary speckled calf panelled in cat's-paw (re-backed, with the original backstrip laid down). Gilt supralibros of Henry Boyle, Baron Carleton. On the spine, six raised bands. Panels gilt. Title and number gilt to red morocco in the second panel. All edges of the text-block speckled red. Re-backed, with the original backstrip laid down. Fore-corners rebuilt. A triangular fill to the front board of vol. I. Scuffed generally, with some wear at the edges. Internally quite a clean copy with excellent margins. An old repaired tear to I.Xxx3, not affecting the text. Closed tear to III.S3. Passages of tanning at III.Aaa2-3 and III.Vvvv2-3. An early MS notation to III.Mmmmm1. Armorial bookplate of Samuel Latham Mitchell Barlow to the front paste-down of each volume. Awnsham Churchill (1658-1728) with his brother John undertook to publish a vast collection of travel-accounts, both those for the first time translated into English and those which "for their Excellency and Scarseness deserve to be Reprinted" as the title explains. The process was laborious, since they had to commission those translations, amass the otherwise scarce works, and assemble the numerous copper plates in order to illustrate the travels extensively. After a 1694 Act of deregulation, Parliament passed the East India Company Act (1697; 9 Will. c. 44 s. LXIX), which overturned nearly a century of precedent. The Act, in effect, removed the Company monopoly on trade with the East Indies, and allowed any firm to trade so long as the Company had no presence in a given port. This created a rush of what the Company termed Interlopers: those who had for decades been barred from any trade with Asia. John and Awnsham Churchill, then Stationer to the King, sought to satisfy that new craving for accounts of previous travelers, which, once purely academic, now had real value to speculators and entrepreneurs to whom Asia and India in particular were now open. By gathering together nearly two centuries of voyages, the Churchills appealed to the newly-burgeoning market of those interested -- materially -- in the prospects of exploration. The Collection included voyages as near as the Ukraine and the Holy Land and as far afield as Chile, America, Africa and throughout Asia and the Pacific. Many appear in English for the first time, and most are augmented by engravings. The collocation of these works allows for a conspectus of what had been learned not just globally but over time as well. The binding owner of the volumes was Henry Boyle (1669-1725), who was an MP for Cambridge University and then for Westminster (in the same Parliament to which Awnsham Churchill was elected in 1705). Boyle -- elevated to the Peerage as Baron Carleton in 1714, providing a terminus post quem for the binding -- had a distinguished political career. He was Lord Treasurer of Ireland, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1701-1708 (in which role the present work was doubtless of nonpareil interest) and, after his ennoblement, Lord President of the (Privy) Council. The set eventually came into the possession of Samuel Latham Mitchill Barlow (1826-1889), the New York lawyer famed for removing Jay Gould from the Erie Railroad and reconciling the feud between Cornelius Vanderbilt and William Henry Aspinwall. He was a formidably wealthy bibliophile and collector; the 1890 sale of his library contained 2,784 lots (the present item was lot 515), including nearly all of the great voyages. Sabin 13015 (which reports a mere 51 plates and 4 maps).
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