The earliest printed account of a journey to Arabia and the Middle East

Mandeville, John. [Itinerarius - Italian]. Tractato de le piu maravegliose cosse.

€ 85,000.00

An early and rare Italian edition of this classic, though partly fictional 14th century account presented as voyages of Sir John Mandeville through Turkey, Egypt, Ethiopia, Syria, Persia, Arabia, India and the East Indies. One of the most popular and frequently translated texts of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance and the first best-seller in the travel genre, the text greatly influenced the course of subsequent exploration. All early printed editions are now of great rarity on the market, especially in the vernacular languages (as here).

According to the story, Mandeville set off on his travels in 1322 from Saint Albans in England, returned in 1343, wrote the present account in 1364 and died in 1371. It was originally written in French and is thought to have been compiled from various sources by Jehan d'Outremeuse (1338-1400) or Jean de Bourgoigne (d. 1372) of Liege. While the account includes many well-known stories of monstrous people and animals in exotic lands, it also contains genuine descriptions of the regions covered and gave many Europeans their first notions of the Near East, Middle East, India and East Indies. The section on Arabia includes an account of the birth of Muhammad (fol. e4v). Of great significance is the discussion of the notion that the globe can be circumnavigated, and it is often said that the reading of Mandeville gave Columbus the idea of sailing to the west to reach the east.

This is one of seven editions in Italian from incunable presses (the first having been produced in Milan in 1480). Its title-page boasts a fine Florentine woodcut depicting Mandeville himself, book in hand. "The listing of early editions of the Travels is very difficult, both because of the number of these editions in every major language of Europe, and because the surviving copies of this very popular little book are so very rare and widely scattered" (Bennett, p. 335). Of this edition, ISTC records only three complete copies (2 in Florence, another in the British Library), with an imperfect copy in Perugia. There is an additional copy in the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Paris. Opinions on the identity of the printer and the date have varied, but recent typographical analysis suggests that it was printed by Lorenzo Morgiani between 1496 and 1499.