HESSE, Johannes de. Itinerarium per diversas mundi partes. – Divisiones decem nationum totius Christianitatis. – Epistola Johannis Soldani ad Pium II papam cum epistola responsoria papae Pii ad Soldanum. JOHANNES PRESBYTER. De ritu et moribus Indorum. [Deventer: Jacobus de Breda, not before 10 April 1497].

Rare incunable edition of a fictional travel narrative. In the grand tradition of Mandeville's Travels, the present medieval Latin text written c.1389 presents a legendary journey to the Holy Land wherein the first-person narrator encounters mythic beasts including a unicorn and visits the Garden of Eden all while in search of Prester John.

Only four copies are recorded in ISTC globally, with no copies in US institutions. Not in BMC or Goff. Copinger 2950; GW M07735; IDL 2281; ILC 1180; Polain(B) 2288; Nijhoff & Kronenberg 0691: ISTC ih00142500.

Chancery quarto (200 × 140mm). 22 leaves (minor soiling). 19th-cenutry red crushed levant gilt, supralibros, all edges gilt, signed by Trautz-Bauzonnet. Provenance: Nicolas Yemeniz, Consul of the Ottoman Empire in Lyon, 1783-1871 (supralibros and bookplate; his sale, Bachelin-Deflorenne, Paris, 1867, lot 2822).