Landmark of navigational science
Edward Wright, 1610
WRIGHT, Edward (1558-1615). Certaine Errors in Navigation, Detected and Corrected by Edw. Wright. London: F. Kingston 1610.

The Hill copy of a landmark of navigational science, second editon with important additions. A mathematician and cartographer, Wright was prompted to examine map projections on his trip to the Azores in 1589: land was sighted when “we should have been 50 leagues short of it.” Certaine Errors in Navigation contains his subsequent justification of the Mercator map projection. Use of his work resulted in the creation of significantly more accurate maps by Hondius, Hakluyt and Barlow. This second edition introduced an engraved title (whose map is one of the first to mention Virginia) as well as supplementary material which is outlined in the front matter. “What made this [second] edition of Certaine Errors into a navigation manual suitable for all seamen was the inclusion of a translation, made by a friend, of a standard Spanish navigation manual of 1588, Zamorano's Compendio del Arte de Navegar” (Waters). STC 26020; Sabin 105573; Waters, The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times, pp. 224. See PMM 106 (first edition).

Quarto (187 x 131mm). Engraved title with decorative border and world map, with duplicate on verso of preface; folding woodcut plan; 2 engravings, one of which full-page; numerous woodcut text diagrams, initials and ornaments (engraved titles shaved at outer edge). 18th-century English calf (rebacked). Provenance: Kenneth E. Hill (bookplate).