André Thevet, 1558

THEVET, André (1502-1590). Les singularitez de la France Antarctique, autrement nommée Amerique, & de plusieurs Terres & Isles decouvertes de nostre temps. Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1558.

An essential source on the Native peoples of Brazil—one of the earliest American iconographies. The second edition, after the first published in Paris by Maurice de la Porte the previous year. Thevet accompanied Villegagnon as a chaplain on his expedition to establish a French colony in South America. "Thevet is to a certain extent one of the first writers to confront the dilemma … [that] his traditional scientific training and the categories of European thought are insufficient, even inadequate, to the understanding of this new reality" (Marcondes). His account includes the first European depictions of South American species such as sloths, anteaters, and the toucan. The illustrations were a major influence on de Bry, Merian, and Gesner. The latter's woodcuts are actually based on those in this Plantin edition—possibly why it, according to Church, was long thought to be the first. Thevet includes an entire chapter on Florida, as well as one of the earliest descriptions of Canada, which provides the first depiction of cigar smoking. Church suggests that this information comes from Cartier, while others have speculated that Thevet stopped in Canada on his journey back to France. Church 108; JCB (3) I:202; Sabin 95440; Streeter sale 21. See Danilo Marcondes, “The Anthropological Argument: The Rediscovery of Ancient Skepticism in Modern Thought,” in Skepticism in the Modern Age, pp. 46-48.

Octavo (154 x 94mm). Printer's device on title, woodcuts in text (some light dampstaining and spots). Early vellum. Provenance: erased stamp on title – Charles William Quin (1755-1818, Irish physician; armorial bookplate).