Münster's Cosmografia
Sebastian Münster, 1575
MÜNSTER, Sebastian (1489-1552). Cosmografia. Cologne: heirs of Arnoldo Byrckmann, 1575.

An early Italian edition of “the first modern” work of cosmology (Hodgen). Münster was a cartographer, historian, and linguist who combined his expertise to create this tour-de-force work, which “brought all the empires of man into a single meaningful progression…[and] this single thread of history he married to geography, so that each should mirror and illuminate the other” (McLean). Originally published in German in 1544, editions in many other languages followed quickly. Sabin 51403. See Margaret T. Hodgen, "Sebastian Muenster (1489-1552): A Sixteenth-Century Ethnographer," in Osiris 11 and Matthew McLean, The Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster: Describing the World in the Reformation.

Folio (311 x 200mm). Woodcuts (first few leaves reinforced at inner margin; some browning and staining; a few small tears). 18th-century stiff vellum, title in ink on spine (joints cracked at ends). Provenance: inscription dated 155?, trimmed at outer edge – remains of early printed book label.